YYH: The Meeting
by Shadow Jaganshi
Summary: The reikai tantei are sent out to find a girl who illegally passed from Makai to Ningenkai. When they find her, they're quite surprised. An interesting chain of events follows that meeting...
1. The First Chapter

The four members of Koenma's spirit detective group stood before his desk. None of them seemed to be paying much attention to him. He was telling them about the next case they were going to be working on.  
  
"Hey! Are you listening to me?" Koenma said suddenly. The boys looked up at him innocently.  
  
"Come on, Koenma, you tell us the same thing all the time. Be careful, this and that might happen and whatever else you said," Yusuke said.  
  
"Have you been listening to any of this, Yusuke? Do you even know what your next case is?"  
  
"Yeah, we have to find some demon, right? Who stole something or something like that," Yusuke guessed.  
  
"You have to find a demon who has escaped into the human world, and you have to bring her back here. We're not sure---," Koenma said, but Kuwabara cut him off.  
  
"Her? We're dealing with some demon girl? Does she have some freaky powers or something and she's going to take over the world?" Kuwabara asked.  
  
"We're not sure, but she illegally traveled into the human world. Since that's not allowed, then you have to find her," Koenma said. "You really haven't been listening, have you?"  
  
"No. So do you know what she looks like or anything?" Yusuke said. Koenma sighed and shook his head.  
  
"All we know is that she's got black hair and she's probably..." he looked at them, "She's not that much taller than Hiei..."  
  
"Okay. Is that all you've got to tell us?"  
  
"We don't know anything else about her. She's a nobody, pretty much. No criminal records, no records of ever having any job, no home owners liscense or anything," Koenma said. "She's in or around your city. Good luck."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"This should be easy," Kuwabara said. "I mean, he said she's not even all that strong, is she? Koenma said she doesn't even have any special powers. Why did he need all four of us for this?"  
  
"Because we're a team," Yusuke said, sounding disgusted. They were back on earth, in the city, wandering through the streets. Hiei and Kurama were in the back, occasionally glancing around at people.  
  
"There aren't many people out here. It should be rather easy to find her," Kurama pointed out.  
  
"Yeah," Yusuke muttered. "'Should be' are the key words there."  
  
Hiei was hanging in the back, looking around but not making much effort to search for the girl. He noticed, but didn't give much thought to, a girl wearing all black, standing across the street watching them. There was nothing extremely abnormal about her, nothing demon-ish, so he didn't bother to point her out to the rest of them.  
  
A little way down the street, Yusuke sat down on a bench on the sidewalk.  
  
"This is stupid. All Koenma told us was that she's got black hair and she's taller than Hiei. How much is that to go on? He didn't say she had an demon horns or anything, or any strange powers or extremely high power level. Why do we have to bother with her? Couldn't he have sent some other people? We're supposed to deal with dangerous powerful demons, not little girls!" Yusuke whined.  
  
"Yeah, no kidding. This is crap. I could be doing something a lot more important right now," Kuwabara muttered. They were all quiet for a minute until Yusuke noticed a girl standing nearby staring at them.  
  
"What do you want?" he snapped.  
  
"Your head! Muwahahahahha!!!" the girl said, laughing evilly. The boys stared at her. She stopped laughing and blinked, looking completely normal. "I'm just kidding." She walked off down the street.  
  
"That wasn't... normal," Kurama muttered, watching the girl walk away.  
  
"There's a lot of screwed up people in this city," Yusuke replied.  
  
"Yeah," Kurama agreed.  
  
The guys spent the rest of that day searching for the demon girl. Several times, Hiei spotted the "insane girl," standing across the street watching them. She never talked to them again, she was just... there.  
  
Two days after Koenma had sent them, Yusuke was getting sick of searching. He decided to sit around and wait for her to come to them, which, as Kurama pointed out, most likely wouldn't work, but at this point Yusuke didn't care much. They were all sitting in the park, occupying themselves with various things such as sitting in trees, throwing rocks at squirrels, throwing rocks at Kuwabara, and making new hybrid plants, when Hiei spotted the girl again. He jumped down from his perch in the tree and walked over to Kurama, who was sitting on the ground in the process of crossing a rose and some poisonous plant to make a poisonous rose so his rose whip could have poison tips and be twice s deadly.  
  
"Kurama," Hiei said. Kurama looked up, still holding his two plants. Hiei looked to make sure the girl was still watching. She was, so Hiei continued. "Remember that girl who was on the street the other day?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"She has been watching us since then," Hiei said.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes. She's over there right now, watching us."  
  
Kurama looked in the direction Hiei had indicated. The girl was standing there, watching them. She looked straight at Kurama, shrugged, then started walking toward them. Kurama and Hiei exchanged looks and waited for the girl to reach them.  
  
"Hello, guys!" she said cheerfully when she reached them.  
  
"Who're you?" Kuwabara said instantly.  
  
"Oh, just your friendly neighborhood stalker," she said, like it was no big deal. She spoke really fast, like she was on a caffiene high, which she was, but we won't go there now. Kuwabara and Yusuke looked freaked out by her extremely fast talking and her casual way of introducing herself as a stalker, while Hiei and Kurama looked completely calm, as usual.  
  
"You're kidding, right?" Yusuke said.  
  
"No."  
  
"You aren't?"  
  
"Aren't what?"  
  
"Kidding."  
  
"About what?"  
  
They all got sweatdrops, then the girl burst out laughing.  
  
"Yes, I'm kidding. Geez, you shouldn't take people so seriously!" she said, laughing.  
  
"Why have you been following us?" Hiei asked.  
  
"She's been following us?" Kuwabara asked stupidly.  
  
"Yes, I've been following you. At least somebody noticed me. Anyway, with my extra sensory hearing, I've been able to listen in on every word you've said, even though I was clear across the street," the girl said happily.  
  
"That's illegal, isn't it?" Yusuke said.  
  
"I don't know. Is it?"  
  
"You could be arrested for stalking us," Kurama said.  
  
"Yes, well I wasn't stalking, I was following. I never had any plans of harming any of you, really, and I doubt I could harm any of you. You're freaky people," she said, looking at them curiously.  
  
"Not as freaky as you," Kuwabara muttered.  
  
"Yes, I'm quite freaky, I know that, and I'm proud of it," she replied, smiling.  
  
"What's your problem? Why have you been following us?" Hiei asked again.  
  
"Come on, shorty! Lighten up!" the girl said. Hiei rolled his eyes. All three of them, although they couldn't see his Jagan.  
  
"Don't call me shorty. I get enough of that from him!" Hiei said, jabbing Kuwabara in the chest.  
  
"Hey!" Kuwabara yelped.  
  
"Well fine then, little twit..."  
  
"You're too cheerful for Hiei. Anyway, you still haven't told us why you were following us," Kurama said.  
  
"Too cheerful my shoe... I was following you because I wanted to." She got three annoyed people glaring at her (Kuwabara was too stupid to be confused and too confused to be annoyed). "Fine, I was following you because you're searching for the demon girl that escaped from Makai a few days ago."  
  
"How do you know about that?" Yusuke asked.  
  
"Extra sensory hearing, remember? I heard you guys talking about m-- er... her, every day," the girl said.  
  
"Come to think of it, you fit her description pretty well," Kurama noticed.  
  
"Do I really? Wow, some freaky coincidence there, huh?"  
  
"But you can't be a demon. There's nothing inhuman about you, other than your unnatural cheerfullness and your so-called extra sensory hearing," Yusuke said. "But Botan's extremely cheeful, so I guess that's not all that strange..."  
  
"Botan's not human, Yusuke," Kurama reminded him.  
  
"Oh yeah, I forgot about that."  
  
"Yes, well, I'm cheerful. Big deal. Are you gonna make it a big deal? No? Good, I'm glad," she said. "Well, unless you have something important to say, I must be going. Gotta get busy."  
  
"You're not going anywhere, lady," Yusuke said. "What do you know about the girl who escaped Makai?"  
  
"Not much."  
  
"You said you were following us because we were looking for her."  
  
"Yeah, I said that."  
  
"Why are you suddenly not so cheerful?"  
  
"No reason."  
  
"I bet you know a lot about her."  
  
"Not really."  
  
"Come to think of it, you really do fit her description."  
  
"That's already been pointed out."  
  
"I know that."  
  
"Then why did you say it again?"  
  
"Because--- Hey! I'm the one asking questions!!!"  
  
"Are you really?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"Give me one good reason."  
  
"Why should I?"  
  
"Because I told you to."  
  
"I don't even know your name! Why should I listen to you?"  
  
"Because I told you to do something, and it's impolite to displease a lady."  
  
"You're too rude to be a proper lady! Why should I care if I'm nice to you?"  
  
"You just should."  
  
"What the heck kind of reason is that?"  
  
"A good one."  
  
By this point, all of Yusuke's friends had multiple sweatdrops and were staring at their friend and the girl like they were nuts. With good reason. The two were having a completely pointless argument. Of course they'd think they were nuts.  
  
"Yusuke?"  
  
"Hm?"  
  
"Could you stop arguing with that girl? You've gotten completely off the subject you started on. You wanted to know what she knew about the demon girl," Kurama said.  
  
"Oh yeah. What do you know about the demon girl?" Yusuke snapped, pointing his finger right in the girl's face. She blinked, staring at his finger and in the process going completely cross-eyed.  
  
"You're creepin' me out," Kuwabara said. "Urameshi, why don't you just leave the girl alone. She's nobody important. She's got nothing freaky about her, other than being freaky..."  
  
"That made no sense," the girl pointed out. "Okay, well, I must be going."  
  
"I said you're not going anywhere!" Yusuke said, grabbing her by the back of the shirt as she turned.  
  
"Ow, hey! Hands off, mister!" she snapped.  
  
"What's your name?" Yusuke asked.  
  
"You know... I don't really remember."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"My name."  
  
"How can you not remember your name?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"What's your name?"  
  
"Shadow."  
  
"You said you didn't remember!"  
  
"I lied."  
  
"Don't lie!"  
  
"I just did."  
  
"About huh?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"This is pointless. She's not telling us anything," Hiei said.  
  
"Wow, somebody finally figured me out!" Shadow said happily. She jumped over and stood in front of Hiei. "You got yourself a brain! Those two don't seem to." She pointed at Yusuke and Kuwabara. "Especially that big ugly one."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
"And you," she said, looking up at Kurama. "You haven't said two words since I got here, but I know from spying--- er, following you, that you're smart. Why do they call you fox boy anyway? You don't look like a fox." She walked in circles around Kurama, looking him over before stopping in front of him again. "You haven't got fox ears, or a fluffy tail... You look completely human."  
  
"Yes. I'm in my human form right now," Kurama said.  
  
"Hmmm. You've got two forms? Can I see your fox form?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"Because I'm overly violent and cruel in that form, and Youko would end up killing you for being too cheerful," Kurama said.  
  
"Youko? Who's that?"  
  
"Me."  
  
"You're Kurama."  
  
"You know my name? Oh yeah, you've been listening in on us for a few days. Well Youko is my name in my fox form."  
  
"That's cool."  
  
"Why do you say that?"  
  
"No reason, really. Just for something to say."  
  
"Oh. You're strange."  
  
"I know. And I don't even have to try."  
  
"Good for you."  
  
"Is it?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
"Wow, something you don't know! That amazing."  
  
"Whatever."  
  
"That too."  
  
"Look here, Shadow or whatever your name is," Yusuke interrupted, much to Kurama's relief. "You are really making no sense to any of us, all you're doing is either annoying us or freaking us out."  
  
"Or both," Hiei said under his breath.  
  
"Or both," Yusuke added. "But anyway, as I was saying, if you don't have a point, just leave us alone."  
  
"Okay!" Shadow said. She spun around and walked away, whistling some overly happy tune, extremely loud and way off-key.  
  
"That was... strange," Kurama muttered.  
  
"Yeah, no kidding."  
  
Kurama glanced down and realized he was still holding his rose and his poisonous flowering plant. He sat down and started trying to cross them again, acting like nothing had happened.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
After that extremely strange meeting, Yusuke and his friends all went home (Hiei went off into the forest to sleep in a tree. Why does he sleep in trees?). Yusuke told them all to meet in the park the next day at noon (How does Hiei tell time? He doesn't have a watch...).  
  
So, the next day, a little bit before noon, Kurama walked into the park. He was sitting on a bench when he noticed Shadow. She was sitting on the other side of the park in a tree with a little bundle of fur in her arms. She noticed Kurama and waved, and he walked over and stood under her.  
  
"What are you doing here?" he asked.  
  
"Sitting."  
  
"Yes, I can tell."  
  
"And holding a baby fox."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes." She poked the litle bundle of fur in her arms and it moved, then it opened its eyes, which, surprisingly, were a brilliant shade of blue, and looked around. "It's a grey fox, so it's okay that I'm in a tree."  
  
"I suppose so."  
  
A moment later, Hiei walked into the park. When he saw Shadow, he was beside Kurama in an instant.  
  
"What is she doing here?" Hiei asked.  
  
"I don't know. She found a fox pup, and she's sitting in a tree holding it," Kurama answered, looking down at Hiei.  
  
"You're really annoying, girl, you know that?" Hiei accused.  
  
"Yes, that's my life goal."  
  
"Well you've accomplished it at an early age. How old are you?"  
  
"Fourteen." Shadow jumped out of the tree and landed neatly between Hiei and Kurama. "How old are you?"  
  
"That's irrelivant," Hiei said.  
  
"How about you, Kurama?"  
  
"Fifteen. Well actually over a thousand."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Youko is over a thousand. This human body is fifteen."  
  
"Okay then, that makes sense I guess," Shadow said, looking slightly confused.  
  
Suddenly out of no where, Koenma appeared in his teenaged form. He looked extremely excited.  
  
"That's her!" Koenma said. "She's right under your noses and you didn't even realize it! How is that? You're supposed to be demons! Demons can detect other demons, can't they? If Kuwabara can, you definetely can! Why didn't you notice her?"  
  
Kurama and Hiei looked slightly confused. Shadow just stood calmly and stroked the fox pup in her arms.  
  
"You're Koenma, aren't you?" she said.  
  
"Yes I am. And you are the escaped demon girl, aren't you?" Koenma said.  
  
"Do I look like a demon to you?"  
  
"Well, you've got red eyes." Shadow blinked. "And you somehow managed to hide from all my demon detecting devices, and three very competent spirit detectives," Koenma said. He looked like he would continue, but Shadow interrupted.  
  
"Three?"  
  
"Kuwabara's not competent," Hiei said under his breath to her.  
  
"Oh yeah."  
  
"Koenma?" Yusuke said, running up behind him. Shadow had been hidden by Koenma, but the second Yusuke noticed her, he freaked out. "You?! What are you doing here? You're not important! You're stalking us, aren't you? Why do you have a fur ball in your arms? What are you doing here?"  
  
"Yusuke! Shut up!" Koenma snapped. "She's the demon you've been looking for, idiot!"  
  
"I am not!"  
  
"She is?"  
  
"No I'm not!"  
  
"Yes you are!" Koenma yelled.  
  
"Now that I think about it, you don't seem quite human," Yusuke said.  
  
"Well fine! If I'm an escaped demon, what are you going to do with me? I can't do any harm here! Are you going to take me to prison?"  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"That's stupid."  
  
"Maybe."  
  
"Make up your mind. What are you gonna do, huh? These guys couldn't even tell I was a demon! Hiei is the only one who noticed me following them!"  
  
"That makes you more dangerous! You can't even be detected!"  
  
"Probably because I'm not a demon!"  
  
"Yes you are!"  
  
"I'm half demon!"  
  
"Well you still illegally left Makai!"  
  
"What's wrong with that? If I'm not going to do any damage, I can just stay here, can't I?"  
  
"Hmm. You can if I assign you a guard."  
  
"A guard?"  
  
"Somebody stronger than you who can watch you twenty-four hours a day and who won't go and feel bad for you and protect you if you do something wrong! And they have to be able to fit in here and make you and themself inconspicuous."  
  
"Well who the hell can fit all those requirements?!" Shadow snapped.  
  
"There's two people I know who can," Koenma said. Shadow looked curious.  
  
"Who would they be?" she asked.  
  
"There's Youko, and there's Hiei," Koenma said.  
  
"Youko can't," Kurama said. "The ears and the tail. He wouldn't be inconspicuous."  
  
Koenma's eyes rested on Hiei.  
  
"Me, right?" Hiei said miserably.  
  
"Why can't I? I'm stronger, I'm inconspicuous, I---" Yusuke said.  
  
"You might feel bad for her, and you can't watch her 24/7. Hiei can better than anyone with his Jagan," Koenma said.  
  
"What's a Jagan?" Shadow asked.  
  
Hiei's Jagan glowed faintly purple behind his headband.  
  
"Ew, your forehead glows!" Shadow said. She reached out to poke his head, but he caught her hand.  
  
"Nobody touches me," he said coldly. He pulled off his headband to show her the Jagan. "If I'm assigned to watch you twenty four hours a day, I can, with this, and you won't even know."  
  
"Ew, you mean you could watch me in the shower and I wouldn't know?!"  
  
Yusuke snorted, Kurama looked surprised, and Hiei looked extremely annoyed.  
  
"I'm not a pervert," Hiei said.  
  
"Oh, that's very good to know. What else can you do with that eye?"  
  
"That's none of your business."  
  
"Can you let go of my wrist now?" Shadow said. "I can't feel my hand."  
  
Hiei looked at her wrist, which he still had very firmly in his grip, and let go. Shadow started shaking her hand around limply to get the circulation flowing again.  
  
"So Koenma, if three-eyes here watches me, I can stay in the human world?"  
  
Hiei looked annoyed at the insult, but he ignored her and occupied himself by carefully placing his headband back over his Jagan eye.  
  
"Yes you can," Koenma said.  
  
"Yay!" Shadow said happily, hugging Hiei with one arm, careful to keep a good hold on the fox puppy, then dancing away from the extremely freaked- out looking Hiei and hugging Kurama, then she did some more dancing before finally calming down a bit, then she gave the fox puppy a big hug.  
  
"What's so great about staying in the human world?" Hiei muttered to Kurama. Kurama shrugged.  
  
"Maybe she's got some enemies in the Makai," Kurama answered. Shadow was too happy to pay any attention to them.  
  
"Thank you, Koenma!" she said.  
  
"What, I don't get a hug?" Koenma asked.  
  
"No."  
  
"How fair is that?"  
  
"I don't know. Well, I better be off. If I'm going to live here, I better have somewhere to live. I don't want to sleep in trees. Like somebody I know. Ahem. Anyway, Kurama, you can have this fox puppy. Being a fox yourself, you two should get along great. If not, let Hiei take her back to the forest or whatever, since he seems to live in the forest... Bye bye!" Shadow said, handing the fox to Kurama and dancing away.  
  
"She's strange," Koenma said. "Well, I better go. Hiei, I expect a report from you at least once a week until we can trust her." With that said, Koenma vanished.  
  
The three of them were still recovering from being thoroughly freaked out by Shadow when Kuwabara came running down the path to them.  
  
"Hey guys, sorry I'm late! What'd I miss?"  
  
Anime fall down.  
  
"What? Why is everybody so freaked out? I just came about five minutes late, that's it. What'd I miss? Where did that fox come from?" Kuwabara asked, suddenly noticing the little fox cuddled in Kurama's arms.  
  
"Shadow gave her to me," Kurama said.  
  
"Shadow? Who's that, your girlfriend?"  
  
Sweatdrops.  
  
"Shadow. You know, that girl who's been following us? Duh?! She is definitely not my girlfriend," Kurama said.  
  
"Somebody explain to that fool what happened so he can stop flooding us with his stupidity. I have a... job... to do," Hiei said with disgust before vanishing.  
  
"What's going on you guys?" Kuwabara asked again.  
  
It took a while, but Yusuke and Kurama finally managed to get the story of what happened with Shadow through Kuwabara's thick skull. 


	2. The Second Chapter!

Hiei was perched on the roof of a building, half paying attention to Shadow, who was in an office building across the street, trying to buy a house. He was watching her through the window, and luckily the real estate guy's back was to the window because if he saw him up on the roof, the man would think Hiei was some suicidal lunatic and call the cops to get him down.  
  
For a week, Hiei had been following Shadow. He preferred to watch her through his normal eyes, because it was a lot easier. He didn't make much of an effort to hide from her since she knew he was watching, and every time she saw him she waved. Then of course he had to vanish because several people nearby always looked in the direction she waved and it would do him little good to have people see him on the edge of the roof of a 10 story high building.  
  
Since Shadow hadn't gotten a house yet, she had been staying with Kurama. They seemed to be friends already, probably just because of the fox pup Shadow had given him. That was fine for Hiei, because he could trust Kurama to keep an eye on her while he went off and slept in a tree or whatever he did in his free time.  
  
Because of this, Hiei happened to be at Kurama's house when an inspector guy came along. (Like, one of those law enforcement people. Not police, but they're like, with the children's section or whatever and all that to make sure kids are being treated fairly and they're all in school or whatever? Like... I don't know what they are. But one of them came along inspecting houses and whatever.)  
  
Shiori Minamino happened to not be home, so Kurama, Shadow, and Hiei were all at Kurama's house alone when the doorbell rang. Kurama answered it to see some guy standing at the door, dressed in a suit and holding a briefcase.  
  
"Can I help you?" Kurama asked. Shadow and Hiei stayed in the living room, hoping the guy would just go away.  
  
"Hello. Is this the Minamino residence?" the man asked.  
  
"Well, I'm fairly sure that's what it says on the gate, and unless my last name changed without my knowing about it, that's what it still says," Kurama said sarcastically. "Yes, this is the Minamino residence."  
  
"May I come in?" the man asked.  
  
Kurama glanced back at Shadow and Hiei, who were sitting on the couch watching him.  
  
"Who are you?" Kurama asked.  
  
"I'm with the Prevention of Child Abuse (???) Office," the man said, showing Kurama a badge. Kurama inspected it for a second, having a fair amount of experience in fake IDs, and he discovered that this one was real. "So may I come in young man?" the PCA officer asked.  
  
"Um... My mother isn't home right now..." Kurama said. He was fairly sure and alsmost positive that for this guy to find Shadow and Hiei wouldn't be a good thing.  
  
"That's okay. I just want to ask you some questions and look around your house a bit. This is an unannounced search and inspection," the man said.  
  
"Yes, quite unannounced... Um... Well..."  
  
"I don't have all day. You don't have anything to hide, do you?"  
  
"Well, no..."  
  
"Then why can't I come in?"  
  
"I never said you couldn't..."  
  
"You never said I could."  
  
"I guess I didn't."  
  
"May I come in, then?" The man sounded impatient.  
  
Kurama stood there with a huge argument going on in his head. A little demon popped up on his left shoulder, and it looked a heck of a lot like a chibi Youko... Actually it was an exact replica of Youko, except it was only about four inches tall... Then a tiny replica of chibi Shuuichi Kurama appeared on his right shoulder with a little halo above his head. Of course, only Kurama saw these two...  
  
(WARNING: This will get slightly confusing and very strange...)  
  
'He has no business coming in your house! Punch him!' Youko said.  
  
'But that's not legal. He'll get thrown in jail for that,' Shuichi said.  
  
'Who cares?! This bozo can't come in!' Youko snapped.  
  
'Just let him in, Kurama. Maybe he won't notice Shadow and Hiei,' Shuichi said.  
  
'Are you nuts?! Do you think he's blind or something?!' Youko yelled at the angel Shuichi.  
  
'We can't have him breaking laws!' Shuichi replied calmly.  
  
'Who cares if he breaks laws?'  
  
'Well obviously you don't, Youko,' Shuichi said snottily.  
  
'Don't get that tone with me, young man! I could whip your ass in less than a minute!!!' Youko threatened.  
  
'Anytime, fox boy,' Shuichi said calmly.  
  
'Guys!!! Hello, you're supposed to be helping me out here, not arguing and killing each other!' Kurama thought.  
  
'Sorry, Kurama,' Shuichi said. Youko just glared and kicked some dust off Kurama's shoulder.  
  
'Back to the argument,' Kurama said.  
  
'Punch him out,' Shuichi said, obviously having changed his mind at some point.  
  
'What?!'  
  
'That's right. Knock him out. You obviously can't let him find out about Shadow and Hiei, and the only way of keeping that from happening is to punch him out,' Shuichi said calmly.  
  
'That's not right! I'm supposed to tell him to punch him out, not you! You're the angel, idiot!' Youko yelled.  
  
'Oh, I forgot... Yes, well you simply can't solve this one, Kurama. Tell him it's a bad time and close the door in his face.'  
  
'He'll get suspicious!' Kurama said (or rather he thought it.)  
  
'Yes, well let him get suspicious. It's not like you have anything to hide.'  
  
'Yes he does you fool! They're sitting in there on the couch!' Youko growled.  
  
'Oh. Well you'll be rid of him for the time being and you'll be able to get rid of them for when he comes back,' Shuichi said.  
  
'He'll probably stake out the house... That's how those lousy stupid officials are... Then he'll sue me for child abuse or something when he finds out I was hiding two unschooled, homeless teenagers,' Kurama thought.  
  
'Well, I can't help you out anymore. Youko is the one with the thousand year old brain with all the wisdom and that,' Shuichi said. He started walking away but Youko jumped across onto Kurama's right shoulder and caught him. They started fighting on his shoulder.  
  
"Damn. They're no help at all," Kurama said out loud.  
  
"Excuse me? Who aren't help?" the officer asked. He was still standing in front of Kurama, who had been standing with his mouth hanging open a little bit and his eyes going back and forth between looking at his left should and his right shoulder, completely zoned out of the real world as his two identities stood on his shoulders. Now they were both on his right shoulder, creating giant murderous plants and the like, trying to rip each other to pieces. Annoyed with the noises they were making, Kurama brushed them off his shoulder and they fell, but before they hit the ground, they vanished.  
  
"Hm? Oh, I was talking to myself," Kurama said absently.  
  
"Oh. Well, may I come in? I think I deserve it. I've been waiting patiently for ten minutes, but soon I'll get annoyed and assume you have something to hide and force my way in. And it shouldn't be all that hard to get past you," the man said.  
  
"Fine... Come in, then." Kurama stood aside and let the man come in. The first thing the guy saw was Shadow and Hiei sitting on the couch.  
  
"Who are they?" the guy asked Kurama.  
  
"My friends."  
  
"Why are they here?"  
  
"Because I want them here."  
  
"Oh. How old are you?" the man asked Shadow.  
  
"Fourteen," she answered.  
  
"What school do you go to?"  
  
"School?"  
  
"Yes, school. You know, the thing you go to so you can sit in a classroom all day and learn about stuff?" the man said suspiciously.  
  
At this point, Kurama was completely freaked out, because he knew that since Shadow didn't go to school, and if she told the guy that she didn't, she'd be put in school. And so would Hiei.  
  
"I don't go to school."  
  
'Crap! Koenma will not approve of this,' Kurama thought.  
  
"You don't? How about you two?" the man asked, looking at Hiei and Kurama.  
  
"I don't go to school, and don't think that you can make me," Hiei said.  
  
The man ignored Hiei's 'don't think you can make me' and looked at Kurama.  
  
"I go to school. I'm in Mieou (???) High School," Kurama said.  
  
"Well, that's where these two will end up, then. Where can I contact your parents?" the man asked Hiei and Shadow.  
  
"I haven't got any parents," Shadow said.  
  
"Neither do I," Hiei said.  
  
"What about your guardian?"  
  
Shadow pointed at Hiei and Kurama. Hiei looked slightly surprised, but he shrugged.  
  
"I don't need a guardian," he said.  
  
"How old are you?"  
  
"That's none of your business."  
  
"You look high school age. I'll get you both put in school, but until then, you're both coming with me until we find you suitable guardians," the man said.  
  
"I HAVE A GUARDIAN!!!" Shadow said extremely loudly.  
  
"You're fourteen, and this boy is no older. Your guardian---"  
  
"Actually, I am older. I'm fifteen," Kurama said.  
  
"That's not old enough. You're still living with your parents, therefore you cannot be a legal guardian unless these are your children by birth," the man said.  
  
"Which we aren't," Shadow finished, then added under her breath, "Thank god for that."  
  
"Where have you been living all your life without parents?" the man asked.  
  
"Trees," Hiei said.  
  
"I won't tell you how I lived because I'm sure it's probably against some of your laws," Shadow said absentmindedly, staring off into space.  
  
Now you can imagine by this point Kurama was pretty freaked out. He was sitting in a chair, holding his head in his hands like he had a horrible headache, occasionally looking up at Shadow and Hiei with a freaked out look on his face, kinda like he was gonna cry, then he went back to hiding his face when the inspector asked the next question.  
  
"Come with me," the inspector said, walking to the door. Shadow and Hiei made no signs of moving. They stared at the guy like he was nuts.  
  
"I don't go where people tell me to, mister," Hiei said.  
  
"Well that's not going to be very good when you get put in school, kid," the man said.  
  
"I'm not a kid."  
  
"Yes you are, you look like you're about fourteen or something," the man said. He grabbed Hiei and Shadow by their wrists and somehow managed to drag them out the door and throw them into the back seat of his car.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"WHAT!?" Koenma screeched.  
  
Kurama had gone straight to Yusuke after that little PCA Officer incident, and they both went to Koenma and explained. Now they were wincing as Koenma screamed at the both of them, especially Kurama, for letting something happen to Shadow.  
  
"Well at least Hiei is with her..." Kurama said nervously.  
  
"WHAT GOOD WILL THAT DO??? IF SHE DOES ANYTHING IN A SCHOOL, EVEN IF HIEI IS WITH HER IT'LL STILL DRAW TOO MUCH ATTENTION TO THEM BOTH!!!" Koenma screamed. Kurama flinched, while Yusuke stood with his fingers in his ears to block out the screaming.  
  
"Well it's not like I can do anything about it now, and I couldn't do anything about it when the guy was there, either! What did you expect me to do?! Beat him up? If anybody was gonna beat him up, Hiei would have, and he didn't! So why should I?!" Kurama said, almost yelling. "Besides, the guy said he'd put them in Mieou High, which is my school so I can still watch them! I don't see why you need to get so mad about it!!!"  
  
"JUST THE FACT THAT YOU LET THIS HAPPEN IN THE FIRST PLACE MAKES ME MAD!!! YOU'RE USUALLY THE ONLY ONE WHO I CAN TRUST TO NOT SCREW THINGS UP, BECAUSE YOU ARE DEFINITALY THE MOST COMPETENT OF THESE IDIOT DETECTIVES, BUT NOW YOU WENT AND SCREWED THIS UP!!!" Koenma screamed.  
  
"STOP SHOUTING!!!" Yusuke and Kurama yelled at the same time, sending Koenma spinning away into the wall behind him. Once he got up, they all stood there in complete silence for a few minutes, trying to get rid of the ringing in their ears. Kurama stood blinking for two minutes straight with the strangest expression on his face, like he was really, really confused about something. He probably couldn't hear anything. With his fox senses, everything was a lot worse to him, rememer?  
  
"Okay... Well all I can tell you is that you better keep track of those two if they're going to be forced to be in your school," Koenma said.  
  
"Thank god they're not in my school. I don't think Kuwabara would be very happy to have Hiei in his school and possibly in some of his classes," Yusuke muttered.  
  
"Well, you two can go now..." Koenma said.  
  
"I think I've gone deaf," Kurama muttered to Yusuke on the way out. "He really needs some anger management classes..."  
  
"I HEARD THAT, FOX BOY!!!" Koenma screamed, throwing a rubber stamp at Kurama.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
The PCA Officer found Hiei and Shadow an adoptive mother, who surprisingly turned out to be Kurama's mother! Gee, wow, I wonder how that ended up like that... So Shadow and Hiei live with Kurama now. Yay, aren't they lucky.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
It's Hiei and Shadow's first day at Mieou High! Hiei managed to twist the principal's mind enough to get himself and Shadow into all the same classes and almost all of Kurama's classes too. Shadow took Hiei's last name for lack of having her own, but officially on all the papers, both of them have the last name Minamino, since that's Shiori's last name and she adopted them...  
  
On their first day of school, Kurama had to wake up Shadow and Hiei and practically drag them out of bed. They all walked to school together and got there late, thanks to Hiei... Wretched little complaining fire demon... (Oops, did I actually say that? How horrible of me...) Lucky for them, since they were with Kurama, and he's top student in his school and all the teachers love him, they let them slip by without detention. Yay!  
  
First period, the three of them had biology. When they got there, their teacher stopped Hiei and Shadow and waited until all the class was there and the bell had rang before she introduced them to the class.  
  
"Class, this is Shadow and Hiei Minamino," the teacher said. Hiei rolled his eyes, because he didn't particularly like having Kurama's last name. "They're new, so be nice. But don't underestimate them, because they are Shuuichi's new brother and sister." The class moaned, hearing the fondness in the teacher's voice when she said Shuuichi. She turned to Hiei and Shadow. "Why don't you sit beside your brother so he can help you if you need it?" Hiei flinched at being called Kurama's brother. He hadn't even been in school for a day, or even an hour, and he already hated it. Shadow, Kurama, and himself were all just playing some stupid game. They weren't related, but they had to act like it, and that was especially hard for Hiei, who had gone years knowing Kurama as a friend, not a brother. Now he was stuck living in his house and going by his last name.  
  
'I knew I was way better off in the Makai,' Hiei thought as he sat down on Kurama's right. Shadow plopped down in the seat on Kurama's left and they started class.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"So how did you like your first day of school?" Kurama asked. They were walking home together with their bags full of homework and books.  
  
Hiei groaned at the thought of the day. He remembered all the times he cursed in his mind for having to be introduced to the class as 'Hiei Minamino,' and he knew the teachers would expect Kurama-level intelligence from him and Shadow.  
  
"It sucked. Big time," Hiei said, annoyed. "I don't think I'll like being your brother."  
  
Kurama blinked. "Well I didn't expect you to. You're just lucky I could convince my mother to adopt you, because if I hadn't, you'd probably be with some old hag who carries around a rolled-up newspaper to beat her kids over the head with!"  
  
"Or even worse, some little old lady who can't take care of herself and would need you to help her do everything. Everything, Hiei," Shadow said. Hiei shuddered at the thought of living with some old hag. It was bad enough living with his best friend...  
  
"Okay, so being my best friend's adopted brother is better than having to be some useless old hag's servant, but I still don't like it," Hiei said.  
  
"Ha ha. Live with it," Kurama said. "So what did you think of school, Shadow?"  
  
"Hmm. Teachers are too bossy, we have way too much homework, and all those girls who kept following you around and giggling were very annoying... What's the deal with them, anywho?" Shadow said.  
  
"Um... Well, they're kind of like my fan club. They follow me around, watch me, giggle over me, but none of them ever talk to me, and once, one of them passed out when I looked at her... They're anorexic, they're preppy, and there's nothing about them I like, most of them have the IQ of an over- radiated mashed potatoe, and they have a heart attack when they break a nail or when their lipstick smears..." Kurama said absentmindedly, counting off on his fingers how many malfunctions they had. "There's more... I just can't quite remember at the moment."  
  
"Well, that's gotta suck," Shadow said.  
  
"It does."  
  
"Look out, Hiei, you're probably next," Shadow said. "Before you know it, you'll have tons of little twits following you around and trying to get you to look at them."  
  
"Damn," Hiei said.  
  
"Yeah, you probably will," Kurama said.  
  
When they got home, Shadow and Hiei sat in the living room and got started on their wretched homework, getting extremely frustrated at points and breaking their pencils. Hiei often just vanished out the window and came back a few minutes later looking a lot calmer. Shadow got kind of suspicious until she saw that his knuckles were all red and bloody and she realized he had gone out and punched various inanimate objects (such as trees, sidewalks, and brick walls).  
  
Kurama, on the other hand, went to his room, finished his homework in less than an hour, then came downstairs, only to be pounced on by Shadow for help on homework, which she was only half done with. Hiei had given up on homework a long time before, (at about the point he got a bunch of splinters in his knuckles from punching a tree and sat for more than fifteen minutes with tweezers, pulling them out, and then bandaging his hands) and he was lying on the couch sleeping.  
  
"Hiei, get up and do your homework," Kurama said, jabbing Hiei in the chest to wake him up. The little demon opened one eye and glared at Kurama, who still had Shadow hanging onto his arm to make sure he didn't leave without helping her on her homework.  
  
"Go away," Hiei said, closing his eye.  
  
"Do your homework," Kurama said.  
  
"Yeah, do your homework so that Kurama will stop telling you to and he'll help me with mine," Shadow said, pointing at Hiei accusingly. Hiei opened both his eyes and sat up, yawning.  
  
"At this rate it will take you until two in the morning to get done," Kurama said.  
  
"Now you're acting like an annoying mother or soebody who sits and nags all day. 'Do your homework. Mow the lawn. Fix me dinner. Nag nag nag'," Hiei mocked.  
  
"Hey, that's just a little overboard. I never asked you to fix dinner or mow the lawn," Kurama said.  
  
"Just shut up and do your homework, Hiei. You wouldn't need nagged if you would just listen the first time," Shadow said, throwing a crinkled up paper at Hiei. It hit him in the shoulder and bounced off and rolled across the floor, ending up beside Shadow again. She picked it up and threw it again.  
  
"Come on, Kurama. Hiei's a twit and he won't do his homework and he'll fail miserably and never graduate school and be stuck in school for the rest of his life," Shadow said. Hiei looked at her with a look of horror on his face.  
  
"Fine, I'll do the stupid homework," Hiei muttered. 


	3. The Third Chapter!

Vash the stampede from Trigun makes a short appearance in this chapter!  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
About a week after starting school, Shadow and Hiei have gotten used to it, they know their way around, they know most of the kids, and most of the kids (especially Kurama's fan girls) know them. Most of the kids don't like Hiei much because he is rude and evil and everything, so it's no surprise they don't like him. He purposely makes himself seem even more evil to keep people away from him. Shadow just hangs out with Kurama or Hiei all the time and avoids talking to people because she thinks they're stupid.  
  
Hiei and Shadow were in phys. ed. class (one of the few classes that those two didn't have with Kurama. When Shadow asked why Hiei hadn't messed with the principal's mind to get them into his gym class, Hiei said, "I don't need to see Kurama in the whole gym uniform thing." That was a good enough excuse for Shadow and she left him alone.). When they walked in, the teacher started talking.  
  
"Okay, class, today we are going to be swimming. You should all go to your locker rooms and change into your swim suits," she said. Shadow and Hiei exchanged glances.  
  
"No, I am not going to swim," Shadow said. Hiei nodded, and as the rest of the class went to the changing rooms, Hiei and Shadow just leaned against the wall and watched. When the teacher noticed them a couple minutes later when she led the class back into the gymnasium, she instantly walked over and stood in front of them, looking furious.  
  
"Minamino! Both of you!" she yelled, calling them by their adopted last name. "Why aren't you changed?!" Both of them closed their eyes and ignored her. "PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!!" she screamed. The students all gathered to watch her scream her lungs out.  
  
"We're listening," Shadow said airily.  
  
"YOU BETTER BE! NOW GO CHANGE OR YOU GET A ZERO FOR THIS PERIOD!!!"  
  
When neither of them moved, the woman pulled out her gradebook and scribbled down two zeroes, then walked back to the class, hoping that the two of them would come back and beg her to erase the zeroes, but neither of them did, which made the lady have an even worse day than she already was having.  
  
Hiei and Shadow were very pleased with themselves and neither of them cared the least bit about having a big zero beside their name in Miss Witch- lady's grades.  
  
Miss Witch-lady was the nickname Shadow had given the teacher after Hiei had been yelled at for doing less than 200 push-ups. The old bat had seen Hiei's muscles (he was wearing sleevless) and decided that he should have been able to do at least 200 in five minutes, but he purposely held himself back and only did 190. The old lady yelled at him and gave him a B for that class. He showed her up really good because when they had to run laps around a quarter mile track, he did 25 in twenty minutes (without even being out of breath at the end), Shadow did 14, and everybody else came in someplace around 6. Miss Witch-lady wasn't very happy about that...  
  
After gym class, Shadow and Hiei were walking in to their next class when a huge mob of people blocked the hall. After getting over the initial annoyance of having the hall blocked, Hiei realized that it was most of his gym class, and they all looked very angry.  
  
"Why didn't you two swim?" one girl asked.  
  
"Move your sorry carcasses out of my way," Hiei snapped, glaring at the girl with his blood red eyes. She looked at him in a preppy mad/disgusted/stuck-up way.  
  
"Why do you have red eyes?" she asked.  
  
"Contacts," Hiei lied.  
  
"Take them out," the girl said.  
  
"No."  
  
"She has red eyes too!" a boy said, pointing at Shadow.  
  
"What's with you two? You're a couple of freaks if you ask me," the girl said.  
  
"We are freaks. We have intelligence way above your comprehension, obviously, since you can't seem to realize that your mindless insults aren't insulting. When you think of something more clever, come back. But until then..."  
  
"GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR WAY!!!" Shadow finished for him. Hiei flinched at how loud she screamed, hoping that some teacher would notice and come out to clear the hall. Unfortunately, nobody came and the preps continued standing, still trying to figure out what Hiei had said.  
  
"You obviously don't comprehend English very well," Shadow said. "Maybe you'd understand pain a little better, lousy---"  
  
"Don't," Hiei said.  
  
"Huh?!" Shadow said, looking at Hiei like he was nuts. The preps stared at Hiei too, wanting to know why he had stopped her from punching them out.  
  
"If you hurt any humans, first you'll be suspended from school, which doesn't hurt you any, but if you hurt these stupid humans, you'll get in trouble with Koenma. Remember? That's why I was---" Hiei glared at the preps suddenly, who were straining to hear what he was whispering to Shadow. "Do you MIND?"  
  
The girl who seemed to be their leader got a really snotty look on her face like Hiei and Shadow were a couple slimey creatures that were only suited to live under a rock, then she walked into the nearest classroom. Her mob split up and went into the closest rooms just as the late bell rang. Hiei and Shadow had their next class three floors up.  
  
"Crap!!!" Shadow and Hiei said at the same time, starting a mad rush up the stairs. They took the stairs two at a time and ran down the hall, making incredible amounts of noise on the hard floor. A few teachers who had their doors open slammed them shut and walked back to their desk, muttering about "insane hoodlum children who can't tell time and have no consideration for any other human beings."  
  
Kurama watched his friends/adopted siblings (although he still couldn't make himself think of Hiei as his brother) run by the door. He smiled to himself, for some reason finding it amusing to see them freaked out over being late. He stopped smiling a moment later when he realized how much complaining they would be doing, since their next teacher was a hag who gave detention for being .00000000000000000000000001 seconds late for class. Instead, Kurama crossed his arms on his desk and rested his head on his arms, preparing his mind to be overloaded with "Goddamn old hag gave us detention. I should just drop out of this stupid school."  
  
Hiei hit his 'brakes' and slid for almost ten feet, stopping perfectly outside his next class and catching Shadow's wrist as she skidded past him in a not-so-perfect slide. They weren't lucky, because the teacher was in the room. They walked in and were promptly accused of being lousy students and they got detention for the next day, because their teacher was an evil old hag who carried around a ruler to slap on kids' desks when they looked in any direction except the direction the teacher was in.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
"That slimey old hag gave us detention!" Hiei said.  
  
"It's not the first time," Kurama said.  
  
"Yes it is."  
  
"Oh. Well in that case it's probably not the last time," Kurama said, sounding confused.  
  
"School sucks. I don't see why I told Shadow not to kill all those preps who were blocking the hall... Then maybe we wouldn't have detention," Hiei said absently. Shadow punched him in the head.  
  
"Idiot! If I had knocked all those preps out then I would be in jail which is a heck of a lot worse than stupid detention," Shadow said.  
  
"Whatever," Hiei muttered, rubbing his head. He narrowly dodged Shadow's next hit and quickly walked around so that Kurama was between himself and Shadow.  
  
"Children! Stop arguing!" Kurama ordered as they walked into his yard. When they went through the door, Kurama's mother was sitting at the kitchen table and she greeted them cheerfully. She was still getting used to having three teenagers living in her house instead of her one son, who half the time seemed like he wasn't even there since he was so quiet and peaceful all the time. Now she had Shadow and Hiei, who were constantly nagging at each other about everything under the sun, living in her house.  
  
"Hello, mother," Kurama said, sitting down beside her. Hiei and Shadow went into the living room and started doing their homework while Kurama sat and talked to his mother. Shadow and Hiei couldn't hear what they were saying, although Shadow was trying (and getting abused by Hiei for being nosy...). A few minutes later Kurama stood up and went to his room. Shadow decided that they must not have been talking about anything too important or worth listening in on and she went back to doing her homework.  
  
"Hey Shadow, whatever happened to your extra sensory hearing? Hmm?" Hiei asked sneakily. "How come you couldn't hear that, which was only a little ways away, but you say you could hear Yusuke and us talking when we were across the street before. Were you lying?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"I knew it! Then how did... Never mind, that was stupid. My mind isn't with me right now. I was going to ask how you knew about the demon girl... But I forgot that you are her..." Hiei said, more to himself than Shadow.  
  
"Idiot," Shadow said under her breath. Hiei punched her in the head.  
  
"Don't call me names, missy!"  
  
"Ouch... I already did," she said, ducking to avoid Hiei's fist. He went off-balance and flipped right over Shadow.  
  
Shiori heard a thud when Hiei hit the ground and walked into the living room. "Are you two okay?" she asked, looking between Hiei, who was lying on the ground on his back with swirly eyes, to Shadow, who was staring at Hiei with a little halo over her head.  
  
"We're fine!" Shadow said cheerfully, ignoring Hiei's moan as he sat up, rubbing his head. Shiori looked at them uncertainly for a minute before walking back into the kitchen to make dinner. The second she was gone, Hiei glared at Shadow.  
  
"We're fine?!"  
  
"I am," Shadow said, going back to her homework. She started punching in some numbers on her calculater and didn't notice Hiei, who was staring at her with an evil glint in his eye. She glanced at him and stuck out her tongue, then when back to ignoring him. A second later, Hiei pounced on her and started strangling her.  
  
They were still rolling around killing each other (not literally killing. Just... strangling) a few minutes later when Kurama walked down the stairs and into the living room.  
  
"Agh!!! You people!!!" Kurama yelped, running over and pulling Hiei off Shadow by his collar. Hiei was struggling insanely, so Kurama didn't let him go. Instead, he held him up to his eye level, still holding him by the collar of his shirt, and glared at him. Hiei stopped struggling and hung there like a little innocent puppy dog, giving Kurama cute innocent puppy dog eyes.  
  
"Hi?" Hiei asked cautiously.  
  
"No fighting," Kurama said. He carried Hiei into the kitchen and dropped him into one of the chairs, then he went and got his books and put them in front of him. "You do your homework here. Shadow will do her homework in there, and neither of you will have any problems. Okay?"  
  
Hiei muttered under his breath about Kurama being an idiot, but after he glanced into the living room and saw that Shadow was still lying on the ground, he happily went back to doing his homework.  
  
"Thank you, Shuuichi," Shiori said as Kurama walked by, of course referring to breaking up the whole Hiei/Shadow fight. Kurama nodded and walked back towards the stairs, noticing on the way that Shadow was still on the floor. He went over and poked her in the ribs. Shadow sat up so quickly that she hit her head off of Kurama's, knocking him backwards.  
  
Kurama and Shadow sat for a second, rubbing where their heads hit off each other, until they head laughter and looked up to see Hiei, laughing evilly to himself and watching them.  
  
"Go to your room!" Kurama snapped, pointing at the stairs. All three of them blinked, realizing how stupid and motherly that sounded, before they all started laughing (even Kurama).  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Eventually, they all stopped fighting and managed to get their homework done. Kurama got his homework done before all the fighting even started...  
  
The next day, Shadow and Hiei reported to detention like good little boys and girls... They sat there for hours doing their work or whatever the teacher told them to do. When Hiei talked back to the teacher, he got after school detention as well. Shadow was lucky because the teacher only punished Hiei for it, so when she was dismissed, Shadow met Kurama outside the school.  
  
"Where's Hiei?" Kurama asked, looking around. Then he looked annoyed. "Did he do something to get after school too?"  
  
"Yeah. He shot off his stupid mouth to the teacher when she told him that he did something or other wrong..." Shadow said.  
  
"Great. Well let's go," Kurama said, walking away. Shadow caught up with him and they walked home.  
  
When they walked in the door, Shiori looked at them curiously.  
  
"Where's Hiei?" she asked.  
  
"Detention," Kurama said miserably.  
  
"Oh..." Shiori looked a little surprised.  
  
Since Hiei wasn't there to distract her, Shadow got her homework done in less than two hours! Yay! Kurama walked back to school about half an hour before Hiei was due to get out of his detention, so, since she was done with her homework, Shadow went with him.  
  
When Hiei walked out of the front doors of the school, he stopped dead and stared at Kurama and Shadow. Kurama was leaning on the wall the surrounded the school with his eyes closed, and Shadow was sitting on top of it. Hiei vanished and reappeared beside Shadow a split second later, surprising her so badly that she fell over backwards, right off the wall. Hiei looked down and saw her lying flat on her face on the ground. He shrugged and ignored her.  
  
"You came to get me, huh?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Yeah. Dunno why. How did detention go?" Kurama said, falling into step beside Hiei. They left Shadow lying on the ground. How evil.  
  
"Don't even ask about that. That evil old bat had me doing college work about human history. Like I care about human history!!!" Hiei said. He suddenly spun around and put his finger right on Shadow's forehead as she snuck up behind him. "Ha ha, I caught you."  
  
"Shut up!" Shadow said. "Of course you caught me! I, er... let you!"  
  
"Pah! Yeah right," Hiei muttered, walking away.  
  
Shadow walked beside him, poking him and doing various other annoying things until suddenly out of nowhere, some dude in a red coat with spikey blonde hair and freaky round, yellow sunglasses pulled out a gun and pointed it at Hiei, screaming, "YOU KILLED ALL THE PEOPLE!!! THEY'RE ALL DEAD!!! YOU KILLED THEM!!!"  
  
Hiei, of course, had no idea what this fruit cake was talking about, and he was pretty freaked out to have some guy twice his height who he had never met before, pull a gun on him in the middle of the street and accuse him of killing all the people.  
  
The blonde guy sighed and put his gun but in it's holster, smiling. "I feel better now! You know, you just have to let out your anger sometimes. Sorry about that," the guy said, and he walked past them down the street, whistling happily. Hiei, Kurama, and Shadow were all very, very confused about that whole thing and they just stared at the guy's back until he turned a corner. Luckily, the streets were almost completely deserted since it was starting to get dark already, so nobody saw that little show...  
  
Hiei and his two friends were just getting over that and starting to walk towards Kurama's house again when the dude in the red coat came running back towards them, screaming like a lunatic.  
  
"WHYYYYYYYYY MEEEEEEEEEE??? I NEVER DO ANYTHING, I'M INNOCENT!!!" he screamed. He ran straight by them, and two seconds later a gang of angry people with various guns and crobars and other weapons came by.  
  
"And I thought I had problems..." Shadow muttered. After getting over the shock of having a lunatic with spiked blonde hair pull a gun on them, then walk away whistling happily only to come back screaming being chased by an angry mob, Shadow, Hiei, and Kurama all continued back home, none of them saying anything because they were still in shock.  
  
"Hello, Hiei," Shiori said when the three of them got back to Kurama's house.  
  
"Hello," Hiei said. Luckily, since he had been in detention, he didn't have any homework, since he had gotten incredibly bored with history and he had snuck in his homework while the old bat who had been watching him fell asleep. So he went straight to his room, which, since he had moved into it, nobody except Hiei had been in.  
  
Shadow followed him up to his room, but when he got to the door, he walking in and slammed it in her face (well, not really slammed it, because then Kurama would kill him for slamming doors. Ever since Hiei and Shadow moved in, Kurama had been eight thousand times more worried about his mother than usual. He probably thought that Hiei would mouth off to her or be a little twit and give her a heart attack or something...). Shadow stood there, staring at the door for a few minutes until Kurama came up.  
  
"What are you doing?" Kurama asked.  
  
"I dunno. What does it look like I'm doing?" Shadow said, finally taking her eyes off Hiei's door to look at Kurama.  
  
"It looks like you're staring at Hiei's door. Why are you staring at Hiei's door?" Kurama asked. Just then, Hiei opened the door a bit and peeked out.  
  
"Really. Why are you staring at my door?"  
  
"Why can't anybody come in your room, Hiei?" Shadow asked.  
  
"Don't answer a question with a question. Why were you staring at my door?"  
  
"Cuz I wanna see inside your room. Nobody has gone in there since it became yours. Did you trash it?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Is it a total mess like a tornado went through it?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Did you catch something on fire and burn the inside to nothingness?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Are your dirty clothes strewn all over the floor?"  
  
"Nope."  
  
"Did you decorate the walls with strange symbols that mean bad things?"  
  
"Huh-uh."  
  
"Have you got pictures of things that you shouldn't pasted up all over the walls?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Is there something else wrong with it? Is it unsafe in any way?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Are you ever going to say yes?"  
  
"No."  
  
"May I go away?"  
  
"..."  
  
"Well?"  
  
"Shoot..."  
  
"You can't answer that, can you?! Cuz you said you can't say yes, so now you can't say yes that I may leave, so I can just stand here all day and ask you questions until you let me in!"  
  
"Hn..." Hiei closed the door in her face.  
  
"Hey!?"  
  
"Okay, you've annoyed Hiei enough for today. Come on," Kurama said, grabbing Shadow by her wrist and dragging her down the hall to her own room, which she hadn't decorated much at all. Kurama dragged her inside, let go of her wrist, then he left, closing the door behind him, and he went to his own room.  
  
Shadow sat down on her bed and started thinking about how she could get herself into Hiei's room and what he might have in there. The first place her mind went was that Hiei had something gross in his room. She pictured herself kicking down Hiei's bedroom door and seeing him putting up Playboy posters on his walls. She instantly punched herself in the head because that was way to disgusting and she didn't want to think about Hiei like that. So she wiped that image from her mind instantly and began thinking of how and when she would sneak into Hiei's room, hoping that he wasn't reading her mind at the moment.  
  
That night, Shadow got up and walked down the hall to Hiei's room. It was almost 2:00 in the morning, so she figured he had to be asleep. She turned the handle as quietly as she could, but it was locked. She had figured it was, and she knelt down to pick the lock with the piece of wire that used to be a paper clip that she had had in her pocket. After a minute, she heard the lock click and she pushed the door open. The curtain, and the window, in Hiei's room were open, so there was enough light for Shadow to see by. She looked at the bed and saw that Hiei wasn't in it. She froze and looked around. He wasn't in his room. She walked around to the other side of the bed and found him lying on the floor asleep, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. She stared at him for a second to see if he was going to wake up, and when he didn't, Shadow started exploring his room. She found nothing perverted like she had first thought. All she found lying on the floor was the bandana that was usually over his Jagan eye and his shirt. Everything else was orderly and neat. His katana was lying on his bed.  
  
'What? He'll give up his bed for the sword? God, he's got problems...' Shadow thought. 'Gah! What was that?' She turned around to look at the door, which she had left open, but there was nobody in the hallway. She turned back around and almost screamed, because Hiei was standing in front of the window. All she could see was his silhouette and all three of his eyes glowing either red or purple.  
  
"Shadow?" Hiei said politely. The polite hint in his voice was just a way to hide his anger and evil thoughts and threats and murder plans and everything else that was flying around in his head.  
  
Shadow stood still, unaware that her silhouette against the door was very obvious, just like Hiei's was against the window. She was being very stupid, thinking that she could hide from him by standing still, because even without her obvious silhouette, demons have way better eyesight in the dark than humans do, and being half demon herself she sould have known that.  
  
"Shadow? What the hell are you doing in my room?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Oh, is this your room? Heh... Um... I was just walking around and I guess I mistook this room for my own! I'll just be going, then," Shadow said nervously, and she turned around to run. Hiei shot over and grabbed her ponytail, almost knocking her over.  
  
"Liar. You better never come in my room when I'm sleeping again, because if you do, you'll lose your head. Understand?" Hiei threatened.  
  
"Why do you sleep on the floor?" Shadow asked, completely unaffected by Hiei's threat.  
  
Hiei growled and pushed Shadow out into the hallway, closing and locking the door behind her.  
  
'That went well...' Shadow thought sarcastically as she went back to her room. 'At least he didn't kill me.' 


	4. Chapter Four!

The next morning, Hiei was glaring at Shadow whenever he got the chance. Shadow, of course, was being her normal overly-perky self and decided to annoy him, which she knew was very stupid, but she also knew she was safe as long as Kurama was around.  
  
"Hi Hiei!" Shadow said, sitting down beside him at the breakfast table. Hiei looked annoyed. "How did you sleep?"  
  
"Shut up," Hiei said.  
  
"Why would I want to do that? You know me! I can't shut up! I just keep running my mouth and running my mouth until somebody either duct tapes my mouth shut, or they do some horrible, disgusting, bloody violent thing that will make me stop talking! Like ripping out my vocal chords, or cutting off my head!" Shadow said cheerfully. Hiei looked at her and raised one eyebrow.  
  
"Was that a request?" he threatened.  
  
"No. That was just a bit of friendly knowledge and you aren't going to try it on my because then I'll set my killer fox boy on you!" Shadow said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't in the room, so Shadow could refer to Kurama as a fox boy without worrying about confusing his mother.  
  
"Last time I checked, Kurama wouldn't kill me," Hiei said.  
  
"And I'm not yours," Kurama added, walking into the room.  
  
"Hey Kurama! Did you hear all that? Oh yeah, you've got that whole freaky fox-senses thing going on..." Shadow said.  
  
"Yes, I have the whole 'freaky fox-senses thing going on,' and with those 'freaky fox senses' I couldn't help but hear some... people down the hall in the middle of the night. What were you doing?!" Kurama said, leading them out the door.  
  
"What were who doing?" Shadow asked innocently, taking her place between the two boys as they walked down the street.  
  
"She picked the lock on my door and came snooping through my room in the middle of the night," Hiei said, pointing at Shadow.  
  
"Yeah, how did you know I was in your room? I didn't make a sound," Shadow said. Hiei pointed at his forehead, where his Jagan eye made a faint purple glow for a second.  
  
"I can keep my Jagan open while I sleep, and it still transmits what it sees, so even though I'm asleep I can still be completely observant," Hiei explained.  
  
"Wow. That's a pretty cool trick. I want a Jagan eye," Shadow said.  
  
"No you don't."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"It's extremely painful."  
  
"I can take it!"  
  
"It's extremely painful, even to somebody like me, who has had every painful thing done to them, including having a hole put through my stomach, getting completely set on fire---"  
  
"You're a fire demon, that shouldn't hurt."  
  
"Shut up. It didn't. I also had my right arm completely paralyzed with pain, I've had broken bones, I've come so close to dying it's scary---"  
  
"Yeah, well you can't beat me! I really did die!" somebody said from behind the three. They turned around and saw Yusuke standing a few feet behind them.  
  
"Skipping school again, Yusuke?" Kurama asked.  
  
"Yup!"  
  
"That's no surprise," Hiei muttered.  
  
"Why are you going to school, Hiei? Why don't you skip too? You can't tell me they've actually managed to train the great Hiei to do school work!!!" Yusuke said.  
  
Hiei looked surprised, realizing that Yusuke had actually pointed out something that he hadn't really realized.  
  
"Hiei still has to watch Shadow, and those child abuse officers, or whatever that one guy was, are still watching both of them, just to be sure they stay in school and that they whole 'adoption' thing will work," Kurama explained. "So Hiei isn't being 'trained,' if that's how you want to put it."  
  
"And he's not all that great, either," Shadow added.  
  
"Wait, back up," Yusuke said, stopping Hiei from ripping Shadow to shreds. "What adoption thing are you talking about?"  
  
"I didn't tell you about that?" Kurama asked.  
  
"About what?"  
  
"Okay, you know about the whole Prevention of Child Abuse officer thing, because we went to Koenma about it together," Kurama said.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Well after that whole thing, I managed to convince my mother that these two wouldn't be any problem, and that if she would adopt them, I could keep them out of trouble and they wouldn't bother her, and after a lot of puppydog eyes, she gave in and adopted Shadow and Hiei. So now, they live with me. Temporarily. Until one or the other finds themselves another place to live or they get their own house," Kurama explained.  
  
"So now you three are related?"  
  
"Only by the law," Hiei said.  
  
"Hiei and Kurama are brothers now. Wait'll I tell Kuwabara that. He'll freak. Hm. Maybe I'll go to school today anyway, if not only just to tell Kuwabara this whole thing... See ya!" Yusuke said, running down the street towards his school.  
  
"Well at least we got him to go to school," Kurama muttered. He glanced at his watch. "Shoot! We're gonna be late!" All three of them took off running down the street towards their school, hoping that they wouldn't be late, because then they'd all get detention, and Hiei wouldn't put up with that, Kurama wouldn't know what to do with himself (Oh my god! Shuuichi Minamino getting detention?! AAAHHHH!!!), and Shadow... wouldn't care either way because she has no brain.  
  
They skidded down the hall and into their homeroom just before the late bell rang.  
  
"That was close... Stupid Yusuke," Kurama muttered, sitting down.  
  
"Why were you so late, you three?!" the teacher asked.  
  
"We weren't late!" Shadow protested.  
  
"You got very, very close," the teacher replied, walking back to his desk.  
  
"Stupid teacher," Hiei muttered under his breath.  
  
"Yeah, no kidding... At least we weren't late. That would have sucked."  
  
"You have no room to talk! You've never been in detention! We were in there all day yesterday!!!" Shadow said.  
  
"I have a reputation as being a well behaved, perfect student, and going to detention would completely delete that," Kurama replied.  
  
Shadow and Hiei stared at him like he was insane.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Oh, nothing," they said innocently.  
  
After second period, Shadow nad Hiei were walking through the halls when the giant mob of preps blocked the hall again.  
  
"Oh my god. What now, loser?" Hiei asked, crossing his arms.  
  
"We know about your relationship with Shuuichi Minamino," the leader girl said.  
  
Hiei stared at them, wondering what in the name of god they meant by 'relationship.'  
  
"You better not mean what I think you might," Hiei said suddenly, remembering something he had accidentaly come across on the internet before.  
  
"You two live in the same house," the girl said. Hiei blinked.  
  
"No kidding? They're brothers! What do you expect?" Shadow said. "Now if you aren't going to tell us something of some importance, MOVE IT!!!"  
  
The girls looked mad and stuck up and annoyed and everything else, all at the same time, and split up into their classes.  
  
"What is their problem?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Having problems with Minamino's fan club?" somebody asked, walking up to them.  
  
"They're part of his fan club too?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Yeah, just about all the girls in this school are. Why wouldn't they be?" the boy asked.  
  
"Well, they seem to be out to destroy us, so if they're doing that to try to get rid of us so they'll have Shuuichi all to themselves, but if they destroy us, he will destroy them, but they can't destroy us, because---" Shadow was cut off as Hiei grabbed her and started dragging her down the hall.  
  
"See ya later, dude," Hiei yelled, running down the hall with Shadow being half-dragged behind him, screaming like a lunatic. They got to their next class just as the bell rang, but since the teacher wasn't there they didn't get yelled at. They went straight to the back of the room and sat down beside Kurama, who hadn't been with them for the little 'you live in the same house!' incident.  
  
Halfway through that class, the principal came into the class room that Kurama, Hiei, and Shadow were in.  
  
"Minamino!" he said.  
  
"Yes?" all three of them said simultaneously.  
  
"Which two?" the principal said under his breath to somebody standing in the hall. A minute later he called out, "Shadow and Hiei Minamino, come with me."  
  
Kurama looked at the two of them curiously. They all looked at each other for a second, confused, until the principal walked over and grabbed the two of them by their ears and dragged them out of the classroom into the hallway. There, they saw the leader girl who had been harassing them.  
  
"This girl says you two have been harassing her... Threatening her and the like. Is that true?!" he asked, still holding them by their ears. The second Hiei heard that the girl was accusing him of harassment, he pulled out of the principal's grip and stood in front of her with his finger a centimeter from her eye.  
  
"We did not harass you, you lousy slut! How could you say that?!" Hiei growled.  
  
"You answered your own question Hiei. She's a slut, that's how," Shadow said under her breath. The principal slapped her in the face.  
  
"I can understand why this girl is afraid to walk in the hallways! You two are a regular bunch of lousy worms! And kids like you shouldn't be allowed to walk in these halls!" the principal yelled.  
  
"You're disrupting the poor children's classes, you loudmouthed baffoon," Hiei said. When the principal moved to 'punish' Hiei for that comment (aka punch him), Shadow pulled out of his grip and darted across the hallway to where Hiei was standing. That distracted the principal away from hitting Hiei, and the girl who was behind Hiei and Shadow ran around them and hid herself behind the principal.  
  
"You two kids should be shot," the principal growled, glaring at Hiei.  
  
"What for?! Cuz this little slut is lying?" Shadow snapped.  
  
"I'M NOT A SLUT!!!" the girl screeched, coming out from her hiding place. Hiei glared at her and she instantly backed up into the wall and hid again.  
  
"Coward..."  
  
"You've caused enough trouble! I'll end your trouble right here!" the principal yelled.  
  
"First, you're being quite loud and it's very annoying, and second, the second floor hallway of ahigh school is no place for a fight, if that's what you're going to bring this down to," Hiei said coldly.  
  
"Isn't that abuse?" Shadow asked.  
  
"I can do whatever I want to you and your little boyfriend," the principal said.  
  
"Firstly, he's not my boyfriend, he's my brother. And secondly, I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to Hiei. He can't fight you! It's unfair!" Shadow said.  
  
"Not by my rules it's not," the principal said. "I've always settled troublemakers this way."  
  
"No, I meant that to Hiei it's unfair. He'll cream you, old man," Shadow said.  
  
"GIRL, WOULD YOU RATHER THAT I FOUGHT YOU OR YOUR BOYFRIEND?!"  
  
"HE'S NOT MY BOYFRIEND!!!"  
  
"I DON'T CARE WHAT HE IS!!! WOULD YOU RATHER I FOUGHT HIM OR YOU? I DON'T LIKE TO HURT GIRLS!!!" the principal yelled.  
  
"Oh? That's why you slapped me in the face, huh?"  
  
"SHUT UP, BI---"  
  
"WHY DON'T YOU SHUT UP?!" Hiei yelled. "This is getting everybody nowhere. Are you going to fight or not? Because if you do, it'll be very stupid, because first, we haven't done anything, and second, you suck. Big time. You couldn't win a fight if your opponent was a two-year-old."  
  
"You're too arrogant for your own good. Come with me, both of you. You can come, too, if you want," the principal added, looking at the leader girl who had reported them. "I know that if somebody this horrible was about to get put in their place, I'd want to watch them too."  
  
"I'll come," the girl said, sneering at Hiei and Shadow. Before anybody got anywhere, Kurama walked out of his classroom.  
  
"Get lost, boy," the principal snapped.  
  
"I'm not going anywhere," Kurama said. "What are you doing with them, may I ask?"  
  
"I'm taking them for punishment."  
  
"What did they do?"  
  
"They were harassing this girl so badly that she's afraid to walk in the hallways anymore." The principal pointed to the girl, who had somehow gone from sneering, to having tears and mascara running down her face in two seconds. Kurama looked at her skeptically.  
  
"Well, I'm sorry, but I can't let you do that," Kurama said.  
  
"Who are you? Why do you care about these punks?"  
  
"It's only human to care about your family," Kurama said, shrugging.  
  
"Oh. You're Shuuichi Minamino, huh? Do these two get their bad behavior from you?" the principal asked.  
  
Kurama's jaw dropped.  
  
"First, that girl you have there has not been harassed in any way, emotionally or physically. You're just eager to abuse some kids, so you'll believe anything, won't you?" Kurama said.  
  
"Let me just knock him out and get it over with," Hiei said.  
  
"You can't knock him out! Do you know how abnormal that would be for some fourteen year old kid to knock out the principal of the school? And do you know how much this nut would hate you and how much more trouble you would get into if you knocked him out? And how about if you killed him on accident? And what if you break some of his bones? What if he had to go around in a wheel chair for months? What if he made you pay the hospital bill?" Kurama said, freaking out. "And that goes for you too, mister principal guy!"  
  
"This is nuts," Hiei muttered. He walked back into the classroom, ignoring everybody else. Shadow and Kurama followed him.  
  
"What was that all about?" the teacher asked.  
  
"The principal is a bloodthirsty lunatic who needs to be destroyed," Hiei said simply.  
  
"Oh."  
  
After school, Hiei was in his room, plotting how to murder that girl without anybody knowing it was him when somebody knocked on his door. He ignored it, but a minute later, Kurama's voice came through the door.  
  
"Hiei, what are you doing?"  
  
"Nothing," Hiei answered.  
  
"Oh good, then you can do the homework that you left lying on the table," Kurama said.  
  
"Nuts," Hiei muttered. "No. Go away. I'm busy."  
  
"You just said you were doing nothing."  
  
"I changed my mind."  
  
"Well that doesn't make any difference to me," Kurama said, pushing open the door.  
  
"Hey!" Hiei snapped. "Don't just pick the lock and come in here! I told you to go away!"  
  
Kurama walked over to where Hiei was sitting on his bed with his sword across his lap and threw down a huge hunk of stapled together papers and a pen. "Do your homework."  
  
Hiei glanced at the papers and his eyes bugged out of his head.  
  
"What is teh-et-hetra-ay-eth-yull-ammonomionium?" Hiei asked, trying to pronouce one of the words on the paper that Kurama had thrown in front of him.  
  
"It's tetraethylammonium. I guess you could say it's a drug," Kurama said, pronouncing the word perfectly.  
  
"Who's doing drugs? AH! Hiei's door is open!!!" Shadow said from the hallway, running into Hiei's room. "Hello guys! Who was doing drugs?"  
  
"Nobody, you idiot."  
  
"Now now, no need for such name calling," Shadow said. She spotted the papers on Hiei's bed and snatched them up. "What's this? Love letters?" She looked at the paper. "Teh-heh-thretchya-herda-shnerda-fergle-wha??? Anti- chlok-in-ter-state? Teh-heh-trod-dot-toxin? What the heck is this?!"  
  
"My homework," Hiei said. "And you pronounced those even worse than I did."  
  
"They're pronounced tetraethylammonium, anitcholinesterase, and tetrodotoxin."  
  
"Whatever... Tehhetromonomonomium?" Shadow said, trying to pronounce that word again.  
  
"Anyway, all you have to do is define them. Have fun. Come on, Shadow," Kurama said. Hiei watched Kurama walk out into the hallway, dragging Shadow by her ponytail.  
  
"Wait a second!" Hiei ran out into the hallway, grabbed Kurama's wrist, pulled his other hand off Shadow's ponytail, and dragged Kurama back into his room.  
  
"What are you doing?" Shadow asked.  
  
"I need a dictionary," Hiei replied.  
  
About twenty minutes later, Kurama came back downstairs to where Shadow was sitting in the living room, watching television.  
  
"Hello, Dictionary!" Shadow said cheerfully when she saw Kurama.  
  
"Is there anything good on TV?" Kurama asked, ignoring Shadow's joke.  
  
"No, not really... There's some show on about cutting apart dead people..." Shadow said absentmindedly.  
  
"It's called an autopesy, not cutting apart dead people. Cutting apart dead people is what Hiei does," Kurama said. Hiei was just walking down the stairs as Kurama said that and he got a surprised look on his face.  
  
"I don't cut apart dead people! I cut apart living people to make them dead. I don't cut them apart once they already are," Hiei said. Luckily, Shiori wasn't home, so she couldn't hear this 'interesting discussion' the three were having.  
  
"Whatever," Kurama said.  
  
"Since when did you watch TV, brainiac?" Shadow asked.  
  
"Good point. Hiei, you wanna spar?"  
  
"Spar? With you?"  
  
"Yes, duh! You think I would ask you to spar with Shadow?"  
  
"I should hope you wouldn't! She'd be slaughtered..."  
  
"Hey!" Shadow yelped.  
  
"The point of a spar isn't to kill, it's to perfect your techniques and keep in shape. So she wouldn't get slaughtered..."  
  
"Oh, that's good," Shadow said. "But anywho, why don't you two go spar and I'll just watch."  
  
"Okay," the two guys said at the same time as they headed outside. Shadow followed them as they jogged down the street toward the forest where they had decided to spar.  
  
Two hours later, Kurama and Hiei were limping up the sidewalk, covered in bruises and blood. Kurama was limping badly enough that he had to have Shadow support him. As they walked toward Kurama's house, they didn't notice that Shiori's car was there, so they just hobbled in the front door as they were.  
  
Shiori heard the door open and walked in to see who it was.  
  
"Shuuichi! Hiei! Shadow! What happened to you?!" she cried. Shadow had a bit of blood smeared on her here and there, but it was mostly Hiei's because she had to wrestle him to the ground to check on his wounds and bandage some of them. Some of it was Kurama's from having him lean on her all the way home.  
  
"Mother?!" Kurama said, surprised.  
  
"What happened to you three?" Shiori asked again.  
  
"Two," Shadow corrected. "This is Hiei's blood."  
  
"Oh, dear," Shiori muttered, looking back and forth between the two boys. "What happened?"  
  
"We got beat up," Kurama said. Hiei looked at him in a funny way, but he decided that in a way, they did get beat up.  
  
"By who?"  
  
'We mauled each other,' Hiei said in his mind, hoping Kurama wouldn't say it out loud.  
  
"Some kids," Kurama said, shrugging.  
  
"Why didn't Shadow get hurt?"  
  
"Er..."  
  
"They had an honor code," Shadow said to save Kurama's skin.  
  
"Oh dear. Well, can I do anything?" Shiori asked.  
  
"No, mother, we'll be okay," Kurama said. "We just need to get cleaned up."  
  
"You know where the bandages are, Shuuichi. Call me up if you need anything..." Shiori said, looking worried. She waited while the boys limped up the stairs with Shadow right behind them.  
  
Once upstairs, Hiei stared at Kurama.  
  
"We got beat up by some kids?" he said uncertainly.  
  
"Yes! She doesn't know I fight like that. She doesn't know you do either. She wouldn't understand if I said we were sparring," Kurama said, limping into the bathroom where he found a couple boxes of bandages. He threw one to Hiei, got some antibacterial and other wound-cleaning stuff, and they split off into their seperate rooms to nurse their wounds. Shadow hung around outside Kurama's door for a while, then went to Hiei's door. She heard him muttering under his breath, something about 'beat up by some stupid kids... Me? Stupid fox...'  
  
"Hiei, stop muttering!" Shadow said through the door.  
  
"Shadow! Don't hang around outside my door. Get lost!" Hiei said back.  
  
Shadow made some strange, "Nyadda nyadda whatever," noise or something, before she headed to the bathroom to wash the two boys' blood off her. 


	5. Chapter Five

The next day, Kurama was still limping slightly, but he walked to school along with Hiei and Shadow. When they got there, people kept giving them funny stares. The usual mob of evil prep girls blocked the hallway.  
  
"What happened to you?" the girl asked, looking at Hiei. The most noticeable bandages were on his face, neck, and hands, because he had his hands wrapped, his neck wrapped, and a large bandage over his right cheek.  
  
"I got hit by a bus," Hiei said.  
  
"No you didn't!"  
  
"What makes you so sure, slut?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Nobody survives a bus accident!"  
  
"I did."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes. Now move your sorry asses outta my way," Hiei snapped. Just then, Kurama, who had been talking to his teacher, walked around the corner. The girls all looked like they had just seen their personal fantasy. They had hearts in their eyes and they were smiling at Kurama. He walked up, barely limping anymore, and stood beside Hiei. The girls stared.  
  
"Could you move, please?" Kurama asked politely. The girls all fumbled to move out of the way and clear a path, practically tripping over each other and breaking their necks in the process. In all thsi confusion, a girl walked up to Kurama nervously.  
  
"Excuse me... er... Minamino? Shuuchi? May I call you Shuuichi?" she said.  
  
"No."  
  
"Oh... Are you... doing anything Friday night?"  
  
"Not that I know of."  
  
"Oh! Well, I was wondering if maybe you would... maybe come to the dance with me?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Oh..." the girl looked like she would die. She ran away crying.  
  
"Now why were you so mean to that nice girl?!" the leader girl asked, standing right in front of Kurama.  
  
"I don't appreciate people who lie to the principal about my family," Kurama said, glancing at Hiei for a split second when he said 'family.' Hiei wasn't referred to as family very often and he still wasn't used to it.  
  
"That wasn't her! That was me!"  
  
"So you admit you lied!" Kurama said triumphantly.  
  
"No!"  
  
"I just said she lied, then you told me it wasn't her, it was you. How can you say that's not admitting it?" Kurama asked.  
  
"I didn't lie! These two really were harassing me!" the girl cried.  
  
Kurama glared at her for a minute before walking right past her through the hall that had stayed clear. Hiei and Shadow followed him, glaring at all the girls as they passed them. They rounded the turn in the hallway before they all started laughing.  
  
"That's just what those lousy slimeballs deserve," Hiei said.  
  
"Why do you think I did that?!" Kurama said. "No kidding they deserve it."  
  
"Maybe they'll leave us alone now," Shadow muttered hopefully.  
  
"I doubt it, but maybe that changed their opinion of me," Kurama said. "Maybe they won't obsess anymore."  
  
"You wish. They go for looks, not attitude," Shadow said. "Those ditzy people won't even remember you were mean. They'll probaly still worship you tomorrow."  
  
"Wonderful..."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Well, the next day they didn't still worship him. They seemed to have had a huge meeting after school to decide whether they should add him to their 'We hate the following people and will find out something wrong with them so that we can make fun of them' list. According to their votes, they added Shuuichi Minamino to their hate list. They would have problems finding something wrong with Kurama if they couldn't find something wrong with Hiei and Shadow, so they started immediatly after school, the day after Kurama had denied the the girl's date.  
  
While walking home, Hiei noticed two of the girls, standing across the street watching them. He didn't let on tha he saw them, but he secretly told Kurama through telepathy. Shadow noticed them looking at each other and across the street, and she put two and two together and looked across the street.  
  
"Don't say anything," Kurama said. "Don't let on that you know that they'r ewatching. Since we know they're watching, we can watch them watch us and we'll know what they see and if they do anything stupid we can kill--- er... punish them."  
  
"Kill them?! Wow, that's cool. Okay, well that's cool. I can do that. I won't let on and they'll never suspect me," Shadow said.  
  
"Maybe we should make sure of that. Kurama, you should erase her memory," Hiei teased.  
  
"Hey!" Shadow said, trying to slap him in the back of the head. Hiei dodged and caught her wrist, then gave her indian burn, twisting her skin back and forth until it turned red and burned. She yelped and scratched his already- bandaged face with the fingernails on her free hand.  
  
"You're a lousy person, you know that Hiei?!" Shadow snapped, pulling her wrist back and rubbing the red marks. "Owie... It burns..."  
  
"Children, no fighting," Kurama said.  
  
"Hey, do you think you should let them know where we live? They might egg your house or something," Shadow asked Kurama.  
  
"Good point," Kurama said. He thought for a second. "Well, one of us could cross the street toward them, and they'd most likely leave since they're spying and spies aren't supposed to get caught. Then the other two could get inside while they're hiding."  
  
"Good idea," Shadow said as they came close to Kurama's house. "You go."  
  
"Me?!"  
  
"Yeah, you better go soon or we'll be too far away from your house to get there in time before they see us," Shadow said. They passed up Kurama's house just to make it look like they didn't live there. Kurama sighed and started across the street toward the preppy spies. They scattered, just like he said they would, and they all managed to get inside unseen. They watched from a window while the preps looked around stupidly, then walked back down the street the way they had come.  
  
"We'll have to get rid of them."  
  
"There's only a week of school left, don't worry about it."  
  
"DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT? You're stupid or something..."  
  
"I'm not stupid!!!"  
  
"Sure ya aren't..."  
  
"My IQ is like... a bazillion! You're is like... not..."  
  
"SO?!"  
  
"STOP ARGUING!!!" Shadow yelled, drawing in Shiori's attention. She walked in and looked at them.  
  
"Is everything okay?" she asked.  
  
"Yes, we're fine, mother," Kurama answered.  
  
"Okay. You didn't get beat up again, did you?"  
  
"No, mother."  
  
"Hiei, are those new cuts on your face?"  
  
Shadow got a halo over her head and Hiei glared at her.  
  
"No, I'm fine," Hiei said. It was partially a lie. He was fine, that much was true, but they were new cuts.  
  
"Okay, well I want you to stay away from those boys who beat you up, all right?" Shiori said.  
  
"We will," they said simultaneously, walking up to their rooms.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
Half the week passed of being spied on. The three got confronted by the girls every day in the hallway, which made them late most of the time, which they got detention for (even Kurama), but the girls never spread any rumors or anything. It came to the next to last day of school and the girls stopped them in the hall.  
  
"We know the ultimate truth about you three!" the leader said proudly.  
  
"Really?" Hiei said dryly. He was getting sick of the whole 'we know you're deepest secrets!' routine that the girls pulled every day.  
  
"Yes! You want to know what it is?"  
  
"Well, if it's our secret, I'm sure we already know it, ya dumb shits," Shadow said.  
  
The leader girl pouted. "The truth is... You three aren't really related!"  
  
The three had no change in their expressions.  
  
"It's true, isn't it!" the girl said.  
  
"No," Hiei said. Kurama and Shadow stared at him. He was the last one they would expect to say that they really were family.  
  
"Yes it is! You don't have the same last names!" the girl said.  
  
"Yes we do, idiot. Minamino. It's written in all the school records, on all our papers, everything," Kurama said, playing along with Hiei's evil little plot.  
  
"You aren't related! These two were adopted!" The girl pointed at Hiei and Shadow angrily.  
  
"No we weren't."  
  
"Yes! Then how come you just all of a sudden showed up in school with the same last name!?"  
  
"They lived with our father on the other side of the country," Kurama lied.  
  
The late bell rang. They ignored it.  
  
"Nuh-uh! Then where's your father? Why doesn't he live with you too? They came to your house, why didn't he?" the leader girl asked. She thought she had completely confused the three, but when Kurama's around, confusion seems to be impossible.  
  
"Our father died. That's why they came across the counrty to live with me," Kurama said.  
  
"How'd he die?"  
  
"Cancer," Hiei said.  
  
"Nuh-uh!"  
  
"I think we would know! We lived with the guy, you ugly ditz!" Shadow snapped.  
  
"You did not! You were adopted!"  
  
"Where did you get that idea in the first place, anyway?!" Kurama asked.  
  
"One of the teachers told us!"  
  
"Well how would they know?"  
  
"You had to report all that to the school when you enrolled, didn't you?!" she asked, getting more and more upset with every word. She couldn't believe this final 'ultimate truth' wasn't true either. Even though it was. Kurama, Hiei, and Shadow were just really good liars.  
  
"Our mother decided that it would be a lot easier on us for the other kids to think we were adopted. That way nobody would be asking a bunch of questions," Shadow said, managing not to screw up with the 'our mother' thing. Before the prep girl could reply, the principal walked around the corner.  
  
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! THE LATE BELL RANG FIVE MINUTES AGO!" he screamed. He saw Hiei, Shadow, and the leader girl, who still had no name as far as Kurama, Hiei, or Shadow knew. "Oh, it's you three! Are they harassing you again? Oh, I see you have an addition to your group. The Minamino triplets. Losers, punks, and idiots of the school."  
  
Well, as I'm sure you can guess, the three of them were furious, but at being called an idiot, Kurama popped. Not literally, of course. He just got really mad.  
  
"I AM NOT AN IDIOT!" he yelled.  
  
"DON'T YELL AT ME, YOUNG MAN!"  
  
"YOU'RE THE PRINCIPAL, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHO THE MOST INTELLIGENT STUDENT IN YOUR WHOLE DAMN SCHOOL IS!!!"  
  
"IT'S NOT ONE OF YOU THREE, THAT'S FOR SURE!"  
  
"BASTARD!"  
  
"DON'T YOU DARE CALL ME THAT EVER AGAIN!" the principal yelled, aiming to knock Kurama's head off. He dodged easily. Hiei and Shadow were staring at their friend, completely confused and having no idea such a side of Kurama existed. Kurama wasn't the type to mouth off the the principal.  
  
"STAND STILL AND ACCEPT YOUR PUNISHMENT LIKE A MAN!!! NOBODY USES THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE AGAINST ME AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!" the principal screamed.  
  
"I'LL USE WHATEVER KIND OF LANGUAGE I WANT TO IN YOUR STUPID SCHOOL!!!" Kurama screamed. "Now you better move your ass. I'm late for History. Not like we do anything on the next to the last day of school anyway, but it's best if I'm there." Kurama turned and started to walk through the mob of girls, Hiei and Shadow followed him, stunned, and the principal jsut stared, to furious to do anything about it.  
  
"Kurama, what was that?!" Shadow asked once they were out of earshot.  
  
"What?"  
  
"Cussing out the principal! I didn't know you had it in you," Hiei said.  
  
"Hm. Well, I guess when the principal is as stupid as that one is, your bound to explode sometime," Kurama said. They walked into History class and they instantly got screamed at and lectured for being 15 minutes late. Since it was the next to the last day of school, they didn't get any punishment for it, but they still got yelled at. 


	6. Chapter Six

Although they got screamed at by the principal, they were still happy, laughing about the totally awesome way they had tricked the idiot preps. The next day, which was the last day of school, passed quickly, with them doing nothing in all the classes. Afterwards, while they were wandering through town after school, enjoying their summer vacation freedom, they ran into Yusuke and Kuwabara.  
  
"Hello," Kurama said as they approached.  
  
"Hey guys. And girl. Yeah, I was just thinking that you guys should have some fun, since you've been in school every day, all day and you had no way to vent your anger, Hiei, I thought---" Yusuke stopped, staring at them. "What happened to you?" he asked, staring at the newest bandages.  
  
The two boys' first spar wounds had healed in a couple days, thanks to Kurama's lovely plant concoctions, and, being stupid boys, they had decided to go out and spar again. This time they mauled each other again, but Kurama had promised that Hiei would suffer more injuries this time. Kurama came through on his promise. Hiei had gotten pretty cut up and chewed up by various evil plants. Since they were in the forest, Kurama had had the advantage, and he had used it.  
  
The wounds they had this time were more numerous than the first time. Hiei's arms were bandaged all the way up. That was normal, even when he wasn't wounded. But he also had bandages wrapped around his chest, neck, and horizontally to cover one shoulder, and he had a bandage over his cheek again.  
  
Kurama had one arm, from his shoulder to his elbow, bandaged. He also had his chest bandaged and a couple Band-Aids on his face. His wounds weren't as bad as Hiei's, because, like I said before, he had had the advantage in the forest. All their bandages were very noticeable because they were both wearing baggy sleeveless shirts with nothing over or under them to hide their arms.  
  
"They were being idiots," Shadow said.  
  
"We were not!" they said at the same time.  
  
"They sparred. Rather cruelly. Twice. It wasn't really a spar. In a spar, you're not supposed to get hurt much. Kurama said so himself. But these two idiots weren't following their own rules, and this is what they got for it," Shadow explained.  
  
"Hey, I thought you had more brains than that, Kurama!" Kuwabara said. "You're not supposed to go out and fight your best friend. You'll maul each other, and then you'll regret it later!"  
  
"Well, we don't regret it yet, and it's been a week since the first one. And besides, fighting Hiei is just like fighting any other superfast sword- genius fire demon. Not that I've fought many of them. But it's not much different," Kurama said, shrugging.  
  
"Oh." Kuwabara looked confused. They'd all gotten quite used to that look.  
  
"Anyway, I came to invite you two, or three if Shadow would want to come along, to a paintball fight. You can spar that way. With guns and paintballs and stuff. You wanna come?" Yusuke asked.  
  
"Of course we do!" Shadow said. "Lead the way!"  
  
"All right!" Yusuke said. He led them away. Shadow had to grab Kurama and Hiei by their wrists and drag them after him.  
  
"What exactly is a paintball fight, anyway?" Hiei asked.  
  
"You have these guns, and instead of bullets, they're loaded with these balls of paint. You shoot people, and when the little ball hits them, it explodes or something and paint goes everywhere. It hurts, too. I don't know how well you two will do with your injuries, but you're demons, you'll live I'm sure," Yusuke said.  
  
"Okay, that sounds rather simple," Hiei muttered.  
  
"Yeah, it's so simple even Kuwabara can do it," Yusuke said.  
  
"Hey! I take that as an insult, Urameshi!!!" Kuwabara said.  
  
"No kidding, that's how it was meant to be taken, idiot," Yusuke said.  
  
"Do we have like teams or is it every one for themselves?" Shadow asked, hoping to keep Yusuke and Kuwabara from ripping each others' throats out.  
  
"Either way. We've got an odd number, though, so it should probably be every one for themselves," Yusuke said. "Okay?"  
  
"Sure, fine."  
  
They arrived at the paintball place and got the whole paintball suit and helmet and everything on, then they went out into the forest to shoot each other. Somehow, for some reason, they all seemed to gang up on Kuwabara. He managed to shoot Shadow and Kurama a couple times, he hit Yusuke once, then Hiei shot him really close and knocked him clear over. They all scattered and by the time Kuwabara got himself stood up, they were gone, and he had to go searching for them.  
  
Hiei went into sniper mode. He hid in the trees and bushes, then when somebody walked by, he shot them. It was Kuwabara the first time, cuz he's stupid and he wasn't paying attention, so he got shot right in the back of the neck by the little sniper-demon Hiei. Kuwabara fell flat on his face agian and Hiei made a point to step on him a couple times on his way away.  
  
Kurama did almost the same thing, but at the moment he was having a face- off against Yusuke. They were shooting at each other like maniacs. Yes, Kurama. Maniac Kurama. Yusuke got a paintball right in the face and went over backwards and Kurama took that opportunity to shoot the crap out of him. Being focused on shooting Yusuke, he barely noticed Shadow come from behind and he got shot too. Yusuke was down, completely covered in red paint, which was the color Kurama had chosen. Kurama turned around and started shooting his red paint at Shadow. She shot him with her blue paint. They were having an insane shooting frenzy when Hiei appeared out of no where and shot both of them with black paint. (Yusuke had been using green and Kuwabara had been using yellow, if it means anything to you.)  
  
"YOU WILL NOT WIN!!!" Shadow screamed, shooting Hiei. She noticed that he only had a couple splatters of paint on him. 'I'll just have to change that,' she thought, shooting him with blue paint. She shot at him and he shot at her and Kurama shot at both of them and they all shot until they were completely out of ammo. Then they all three collapsed at the same time. Shadow fell on top of Yusuke, right onto his stomach. He grunted, but he was still just laying there, covered in paint.  
  
Afterwards, they all decided, after looking at the amount of colors on each other, that Hiei had won by far. Kurama had come in second, Shadow in third, Yusuke fourth, and, no surprise here, Kuwabara came in last. Nobody had much yellow paint at all, but when they had finally found Kuwabara, he was soaked in black paint and also lying in a puddle of black paint. Yusuke had been covered in red paint, therefore Kurama was in second. Shadow completely saturated Hiei in blue, and now he had a nice blend of purple covering his paintball suit (blue [Shadow]+red[Kurama]=purple).  
  
"Hiei wins. Kurama comes in second. Shadow comes third. I'm fourth. And Kuwabara is still unconscious. Hiei, are you sure you didn't give him a nice kick in the head, too?" Yusuke said.  
  
"I didn't kick him. He's just weak!" Hiei said, pulling off his painted- purple paintball suit. He had huge welts everywhere he had been shot. Shadow and Kurama pulled off their suits and Shadow almost screamed at the amount of welts on her. Kurama got a slightly disgusted look on his face. Yusuke pulled off his suit and he also pulled off Kuwabara's suit. Kuwabara was still unconscious, but he looked like one big, ugly, puffy, red welt.  
  
"He'll be feeling that for a while," Yusuke muttered.  
  
"I'd say we all will be. Paintballs HURT," Shadow said, already taking some pain reliever pills. Yusuke snatched the bottle from her and ate a couple of them, shortly realizing that they tasted horrible because they were not chewables and he had just chewed them. Stupid Yusuke. He made faces like he would throw up, then he ran away with his hand over his mouth, and Kurama and the others had a strange suspicion he was doing just that.  
  
They all sat down, exhausted, and waited for Yusuke to come back. While they were waiting, Kuwabara started to come to. The first thing he saw when he woke up was Hiei, sitting with his back to him. After a minute he remembered the last thing he saw before he passed out was Hiei, aiming a gun at his crotch.  
  
Kuwabara jumped up and started strangling Hiei.  
  
"You lousy stupid shorty! How could you shoot my precious balls?! How dare you!? That hurts a lot, you know! I'm gonna be sore for weeks, thanks to you!" Kuwabara yelled, shaking Hiei around like a rag doll.  
  
"Kuwabara!" Kurama snapped, grabbing his arms and glaring at him. "Let go, you oversized jerk!"  
  
"No! He shot me! He deserves to be strangled!"  
  
Shadow decided that she wasn't in the mood for Kuwabara's stupid attitude, and she stood up and smashed him in the back of the head with her paintball gun. He went limp and fell over, smacking his head off the ground when he hit.  
  
"That works a lot better than insults, you know," Shadow said to Kurama. Kurama shrugged. Hiei was sitting there rubbing his neck. He stood up and glared down at Kuwabara (wow, he was looking DOWN at somebody for once!).  
  
"Your precious balls? God, you're sick," Hiei muttered, delivering a hard kick right between Kuwabara's legs. The guy twitched and grunted in his sleep.  
  
"That had to hurt..." Kurama muttered, flinching.  
  
"I'm sure it did. You want to know it as a fact?" Shadow said, meaning, 'If you're not positive, then I could just kick you in the balls and you can make sure you were right about it hurting.'  
  
"No, thank you. This is one case where I'd say a very educated guess is best," Kurama said. He had a sweatdrop. Shadow burst out laughing.  
  
"Okay, fine," she muttered, laughing. About then, Yusuke came back, wiping his mouth on a paper towel.  
  
"I guess we're gonna leave now?" he said.  
  
"Hey, why don't you all come over to my house?" Kurama said. "Or actually for the past few months, it'd be more appropriate to call it our house, but whatever."  
  
"Sure. I don't want to have to drag Kuwabara any further than I have to, and your house is closest," Yusuke said. "Let's go."  
  
"All right," Kurama said, leading the way out. Hiei walked beside him, Shadow was trailing a few feet behind them, and Yusuke was bringing up the rear, dragging Kuwabara by his arm.  
  
When they walked up to the front door of Kurama's house, his mother was just walking out.  
  
"Oh, Shuuichi! You brought friends over?" Shiori said.  
  
"Yes, I hope you don't mind, Mother," Kurama said.  
  
"Actually, I was just heading out... I have a few errands to run. You five can hang out here, I guess, if you want," Shiori said. "Just don't wreck the house."  
  
"We won't," they all said at the same time as they walked inside.  
  
Yusuke dragged Kuwabara in and left him lying on the floor in the living room with Shadow sitting on the couch with a fire poker, jabbing Kuwabara in the chest with it. Yusuke wandered away. Kurama was in his room, breeding his poisonous roses, and Hiei was in his room polishing his katana. Yusuke walked upstairs and into the first room he saw, which happened to be Hiei's.  
  
After a while, Shadow was extremely bored with poking Kuwabara in the chest with a fire poker, and since he was making no signs of coming to anytime soon, she walked upstairs to see what the conscious boys were doing. She found Hiei and Yusuke in Hiei's room playing bloody knuckles. They were playing bloody knuckles and taking the name literally. Both of them had cuts on their hands and their blood was covering each other's hands. By this point they were wincing, but their eyes were locked on each other's, and neither would give up. Shadow stood in the doorway, staring at them with her mouth hanging open like a dork.  
  
"What---" she started.  
  
"Sh!" Hiei said. He slammed his knuckles across Yusuke's and Yusuke yelped, breaking eye contact and drawing back his hand. He stared at his bruised and bloody knuckles for a second while Hiei grinned at his victory. Shadow was still staring with her mouth hanging open. Without saying anything, she walked over to Kurama's room and pushed the door open to find him sitting on his bed, concentrating to make some plant grow. There was a rose growing up out of the flower pot in front of him, only it looked a lot more evil than a normal rose. Hiei and Yusuke walked over and stood behind Shadow to watch Kurama.  
  
"Hello," he said, still staring at the plant.  
  
"Hi. What's that?" Shadow asked, pointing at the evil-looking rose.  
  
"It's a poisonous rose."  
  
"So you finally got that whole hybrid thing to work?" Hiei said.  
  
"Yes. I just don't know how it'll go with the rose whip and I have no one to test it on. By the way, if you're going to play bloody knuckles like that, it'd be best to get some medical help. You cut down to the bone, you idiots," Kurama said.  
  
"Oh yeah. Well, having medicine would be good," Yusuke said.  
  
"Who won?" Kurama asked.  
  
"Hiei."  
  
"Boo-yeah, go me," Hiei said.  
  
"Medicine?" Yusuke reminded Kurama.  
  
"Oh. Right." Kurama walked over and picked up a small jar off a book shelf. "This is something I made. It should help a good bit."  
  
Yusuke took the bottle and looked at it suspiciously. "This isn't some freaky kind of poison, is it?"  
  
"Do you really think I would try to poison my best friends?" Kurama asked, slightly annoyed.  
  
"Give me that!" Hiei snapped, snatching the bottle. He popped off the lid and sniffed it. His eyes went crossed and he got a disgusted look on his face. "God, Kurama, what is this made of?! It smells horrible!"  
  
"Does the smell really matter? If you care that much about the smell I'll add some roses and it'll smell all flowery! Would you be happy then?"  
  
"No. Then I'd smell like you."  
  
"Really! You shouldn't care about the scent! You're supposed to smell funny!" Shadow said, pointing her finger at Hiei's chest. She caught a whiff of the medicine and coughed so bad it sounded like she would puke up her lungs, or at the very least choke on them.  
  
"Are you okay?" Hiei asked, looking down at Shadow where she had collapsed on the floor.  
  
"That smells TERRIBLE!!! I forbid you to come near me if you use that!" Shadow said, pointing up at Hiei. He raised one eyebrow.  
  
"Kurama, you better do something with this before we all die."  
  
"I'm so glad you appreciate my medicines," Kurama muttered sarcastically, snatching the bottle out of Hiei's hand.  
  
"They don't usually smell like some animal that's been dead and rotten for weeks and has flies and maggots living in it and it's nothing more than a melted slimey mess on the side of the road with bits of fur clinging to the bones of the whatever it was that died because nobody can tell anymore since it's just a puddle of slime and blood and bones with a few bits of guts and fur here and there and everybody who comes near it dies of a heart attack because the smell was such a horrible shock to their system that their heart stopped and left them to die and become another even bigger rottener slimeyer mess on the side of the road!!!" Hiei said all in one breath. He started panting and doubled over with his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Kurama, Yusuke, and Shadow stared at him like he was insane for a few minutes.  
  
Shadow finally broke their silence. "Nice details," she said sarcastically.  
  
Kurama had started pouring in some rose powder before Hiei had started his rant about dead slimey puddles, and he finally snapped out of his staring and realized he'd poured in enough powder to start overflowing the medicine bottle. The powder was going all over the place. Kurama stopped pouring it and stared at the rose dust all over the floor.  
  
"Nice mess you made there, Kurama," Yusuke said.  
  
"Shut up or clean it up, your choice," Kurama said. Yusuke shut up. Kurama went about mixing his rose dust into the medicine while Hiei and Yusuke waited with blood still covering their knuckles.  
  
"You could go wash the blood off while you wait," Kurama suggested. Hiei and Yusuke stared at their hands, covered in blood, and simultaneously walked into the bathroom to wash their hands.  
  
"God, those boys are so ungrateful," Shadow said, walking around in Kurama's room, looking at his various bottles, picking up one occasionally and popping off the lid to smell it.  
  
"Gah! Don't touch that one!" Kurama said suddenly, shooting over and grabbing Shadow's wrist before she touched a small bottle full of a strange blue powder.  
  
"Why? What is it?"  
  
"Deadly."  
  
"YOU MAKE DEADLY POWDERS AND KEEP THEM IN YOUR ROOM??? WHAT THE HELL WOULD YOU DO IF YOUR MOTHER TOUCHED ONE, HM??? WHY WOULD YOU MAKE SOME DEADLY POWDER IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU INSANE FOX BOY??? ARE YOU NUTS??? YOU HAVEN'T HAD TO USE ANY OF YOUR SCREWED UP CONCOCTIONS FOR MURDER, HAVE YOU? YOU MAKE MEDICINES AND JUNK, NOT POISON!!! ARE YOU INSANE??? WHAT OTHER KIND OF THINGS DO YOU MAKE??? LOVE POTIONS??? TRUTH SERUMS??? DRUGS??? HALLUCINOGENS???" Shadow screamed. Hiei and Yusuke stared from the doorway. Kurama had one eyebrow raised and was looking at her like she was insane. He dragged her away from his shelves full of 'screwed up concoctions' and stood her in the middle of the room.  
  
"I don't make anything that wouldn't be useful," Kurama said.  
  
"That's vague," Shadow muttered.  
  
"Yes it is, and I'm not gonna specify anything," Kurama said. He picked up his freshly altered medicine and handed it to Hiei. The he grabbed Shadow's wrist, dragged her over, grabbed Hiei's hand, put her wrist in his hand, closed his hand around it, and told Hiei to get her away from his room. Hiei complied by dragging Shadow down the hall, putting her in her room, and jamming a chair against the doorknob to keep her in. He was just about to use the medicine Kurama had just given him when, out of no where, Koenma appeared in front of him. Hiei almost had a heart attack.  
  
"DON'T EVER JUST APPEAR IN FRONT OF ME WHEN I'M IN A HOUSE AND I DON'T EXPECT LITTLE PACIFIER-SUCKERS TO APPEAR IN FRONT OF ME LIKE THAT!!!" Hiei screamed at Koenma, who was floating at his eye level.  
  
"DON'T YOU START CALLING ME NAMES TOO, HIEI!!!"  
  
"I'LL CALL YOU WHATEVER I WANT, MIDGET BOY!!!"  
  
"YOU BETTER WATCH IT, SHORT STUFF!!!"  
  
"I'M BIGGER THAN YOU ARE!!!"  
  
Poof. Teen Koenma appeared.  
  
"Damn," Hiei muttered, looking up at Koenma.  
  
"That's right, now you're short," Koenma said happily. Hiei got a sweatdrop.  
  
"Whatever. Why are you here?" Hiei asked, hoping to get Koenma off the topic of hieght.  
  
"Oh yeah. I came to tell you some good news and bad news. Which do you want first?"  
  
"Good news," Hiei said after a second.  
  
"The good news is: I finally think Shadow is trustworthy enough that you don't have to keep her under constant suveilance anymore," Koenma said. A muffled "WOOHOO!!!" came from the other side of the door.  
  
"HEY, NO LISTENING ON PRIVATE CONVERSATIONS, MISSY!" Hiei yelled through the door at Shadow. She didn't reply. "What's the bad news?" Hiei asked.  
  
"The bad news is that you are about six months behind in your weekly reports, therefore you are in trouble," Koenma said. A muffled, "Ha ha!" came through the door, but Hiei ignored it.  
  
"I'm in trouble? Like, how much trouble?" Hiei asked. Hiei didn't know, but Kurama was also listening in on the conversation, and at this point he walked out of his room, carrying the poisonous rose in a flower pot.  
  
"Kurama, what's that?" Koenma asked.  
  
"A rose," Kurama said.  
  
'Good move, Kurama, you dumb shit,' the evil little chibi Youko said, appearing on his shoulder. 'You're in deep shit now. You can't cross makai plants and ningenkai plants legally. Stupid boy.'  
  
'Shut up!' Kurama thought, glaring at his left shoulder.  
  
'What will you do now, hm?' Youko asked.  
  
'Shut up! Go away!' Kurama thought, annoyed.  
  
"Kurama? That's not a normal rose, is it?" Koenma asked suspiciously.  
  
"Well..." Kurama said, but the little Youko on his shoulder interrupted.  
  
'Lie! Tell him it's normal! You can't get in trouble! He's stupid, he won't know the difference!' Youko said. Chibi Shuuichi appeared on Kurama's right shoulder.  
  
'Tell the truth. He might be merciful. And if he's not, you and Hiei will go to prison together,' the little Shuuichi said, shrugging.  
  
'Hiei's not going to prison, and neither am I!' Kurama thought angrily to Shuuichi.  
  
'What makes you so sure? Koenma's pretty stupid sometimes, he might just decide to throw you both in prison and get it over with,' Youko said.  
  
'I'M BEING GANGED UP ON!!!' Kurama thought angrily to the two little reflections of himself.  
  
'Yes, well, if you didn't want our help then why did you bring us here?' Shuuichi asked.  
  
'I didn't bring you here, you lousy chibi midgets!!! You appeared on your own!!!' Kurama snapped.  
  
'That's true,' Youko said. 'But that's cuz you have a problem deciding these things properly on your own, so I need to help you.'  
  
'You help him? All you do is confuse him, stupid fox! I'm the one who's helping!' Shuuichi yelled.  
  
"Kurama, you haven't answered me yet. Is that a normal rose or isn't it?" Koenma asked.  
  
Kurama was overwhelmed by the two chibis on his shoulders. They both started screaming instructions at him and arguing with each other and Shuuichi pulled out a chibi rose whip and Youko pulled out a chibi death tree and they started fighting on top of Kurama's head.  
  
"No, it's not normal," Kurama said. The two chibis on his head, who had abandoned their plants and had resorted to good old fashioned rolling on the ground (Kurama's head) and strangling each other, stopped strangling each other and jumped back to Kurama's shoulders and started shouting in his ears again.  
  
'What are you, nuts?! You're in for it now, you dumb shit, and since you disobeyed me, I refuse to help you ever again,' Youko said, crossing his arms and acting very stuck up.  
  
'Yeah, like you ever helped him in the first place, stupid fox,' Shuuichi said. The he said to Kurama, 'Good boy. I knew you knew right from wrong. Of course, the human side is always better.'  
  
'Humans suck,' Youko said.  
  
'SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU!!! GO AWAY!!! NOW!!!' Kurama screamed at them (thought/screamed). They glared at him. Youko vanished in an explosion of rose petals and Shuuichi just vanished. Yes, the demon always had to make his exit so interesting. But he left tons of chibi rose petals all over Kurama's shoulder.  
  
"I knew it wasn't normal! What did you do with it, Kurama?" Koenma asked.  
  
"Hey! Don't yell at Kurama! I want to hear you yell at Hiei first!" Shadow said through her door.  
  
"Fine then," Koenma agreed, turning toward Hiei. Hiei had just been calming down a bit and preparing to listen to somebody else get lectured. He looked startled and started to 'innocently' walk away, but Koenma caught him by the back of his shirt.  
  
"Where are you going young man?" Koenma asked.  
  
"Away?" Hiei said, as if asking permission to leave.  
  
"Nope. I haven't told you the bad new yet. You're in trouble, because you are months late on your weekly reports. You got the specific order to watch Shadow and report to me every week. Why didn't you?!" Koenma snapped.  
  
"It's kind of hard to go to spirit world when you're in school!" Hiei argued.  
  
"That's no excuse! You had weekends! You could have come during the middle of the night! You had plenty of free time!" Koenma said.  
  
"I couldn't come on weekends because Shiori was almost always around and don't think she wouldn't notice me missing!" Hiei yelled.  
  
"What about during the night? She would have assumed you were in your room asleep!"  
  
"You know that's impossible, thanks to you! I know you sleep at night! I don't think you'd appreciate having some demon wake you up at night just to tell you some girl isn't causing any trouble!"  
  
"Since when did you care what I cared about?!" Koenma asked.  
  
"Since you became my boss!"  
  
"That's---" Koenma started to yell, but then he looked confused. "You actually think of me as your boss? I mean, I know I am, but I didn't expect you to think of me as your boss, since you're the mighty Hiei or whatever and you don't listen to anybody."  
  
"I don't listen to anybody," Hiei said.  
  
"Except me."  
  
"Shut up."  
  
"You can't make me."  
  
"You wanna see me try?"  
  
"No."  
  
"You're scared of me."  
  
"No I'm not. Why should I be?"  
  
"Because I'm a scary person."  
  
"I can agree with that," Shadow muttered. They ignored her.  
  
"You're not scary."  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Yes really."  
  
"Boo," Hiei said dryly.  
  
"AAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Koenma screamed.  
  
Hiei raised one eyebrow.  
  
"Just kidding," Koenma said.  
  
"Yeah, I should hope you were."  
  
"HEY, GET BACK TO PUNISHING HIM!" Shadow yelled, pounding on her door.  
  
"DAMN YOU, SHADOW!" Hiei yelled.  
  
"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot! Anyway, the punishment for being months behind on your reports and having no decent excuse is... You have to take the blue ogre's place for a month. He went on vacation and I need a servant," Koenma said matter-of-factly. Hiei's jaw dropped. Kurama and Shadow choked to keep from laughing. Yusuke was no where to be found.  
  
'Maybe he fell in the toilet,' Kurama thought when he realized Yusuke was missing.  
  
"Servant?!" Hiei said. "I am nobody's servant!"  
  
"Well you are now. Come along, servant boy. You walk to my left and two steps behind me," Koenma explained, thoroughly pleased with himself.  
  
"Don't start calling me servant boy, Pacifier Junkie!" Hiei snapped.  
  
"DID YOU HEAR ME? STAND TO MY LEFT AND TWO STEPS BEHIND ME, SERVANT BOY!!!" Koenma screamed, his head inflating so big that Hiei cowered away like a scared dog.  
  
"Yes, I heard you," Hiei said resentfully as Koenma panted for breath.  
  
"Good. Now, Kurama, what's this rose plant you have?" Koenma asked, walking forward. He turned around and saw Hiei hadn't moved. "GET YOUR SCRAWNY SELF OVER HERE, SERVANT BOY!"  
  
"DON'T CALL ME SERVANT BOY, SUCKER BOY!!!" Hiei screamed.  
  
"WOULD YOU RATHER GO TO PRISON, SERVANT BOY?!"  
  
Hiei looked startled but angrily walked forward and stood two steps behind Koenma and to his left.  
  
Shadow was lying on the floor in her room, curled up laughing so hard she had long since stopped breathing. She had probably broken a rib or two from laughing.  
  
"Now anyway, Kurama, what did you do with this rose?" Koenma asked.  
  
"It's a hybrid."  
  
"So? What's that mean?"  
  
"I crossed it with another plant," Kurama explained, silnetly wondering how the hundreds-of-years-old ruler of spirit world didn't know what a hybrid was.  
  
"What plant? An earth plant?"  
  
"Sort of..." Kurama said nervously.  
  
"Sort of? How can it be sort of?!" Koenma asked, thoroughly confused.  
  
"Well, I grew it here, but it's from demon world, originally," Kurama said nervously.  
  
"You crossed a human plant with a demon plant?" Koenma said.  
  
"Yeah," Kurama said, flinching slightly.  
  
"How could you be so stupid?!" Koenma asked. Hiei raised one eyebrow.  
  
"It's not stupid! I'm not going to do anything with it except make a more powerful rosewhip!"  
  
"Well that'll be good when you need your rosewhip, but you don't need it now so why do you need to go mixing different worlds' plants?!"  
  
"So I'll have the plant when I need it."  
  
"Oh... That's a good enough reason. I'll let this slip, but don't mix plants with the purpose of harming human life. If you ever do, you'll be in prison before you can do anything about it," Koenma said. Hiei's mouth was hanging open at the pure unfairness of it.  
  
"You let him off for something even worse than what I did!" Hiei said.  
  
"Shut up, servant boy," Koenma said. Kurama could almost see the steam pouring out of Hiei's ears.  
  
"He's right though... You're not being fair," Kurama said.  
  
"Since when did you care?" Koenma asked.  
  
"He's my best friend, of course I care!" Kurama said.  
  
"Well, he's my replacement servant until my normal one comes back from his vacation," Koenma said.  
  
"How long'll that be?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Two weeks," Koenma replied.  
  
"Two weeks?!"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"Damn."  
  
"What am I supposed to tell my mother?" Kurama asked. "She'll wonder where he is."  
  
"Use that big brain of yours to think of something!" Koenma said. "Now, back to Spirit World!"  
  
Koenma vanished. Hiei stayed right where he was. A half a second later, Koenma reappeared, grabbed Hiei's arm and they both vanished.  
  
"Poor Hiei," Kurama said. Yusuke finally walked out of the bathroom.  
  
"Why? What happened to Hiei?" Yusuke asked. Kurama got about five sweatdrops and explained.  
  
"God, I pity him," Yusuke said after he finally stopped laughing and caught his breath.  
  
"You pity who and why?" Kuwabara asked, walking up the stairs. Shadow pounded on the door, screaming.  
  
"LET ME OUT, YOU LOUSY BUMS!!! DON'T THINK I CAN'T HEAR YOU OUT THERE!!!" she screamed. Kurama sighed and pulled the chair out from where it was wedged under the door. The door flew open and Shadow fell flat on her face.  
  
"Hey, how'd I get here?" Kuwabara asked. He glared at his two friends, then at Shadow when she managed to stand up. "You guys better answer my questions!"  
  
"God, you act like being at my house is a bad thing. Yusuke brought you here because Shadow knocked you unconscious and my house was a lot closer so he didn't have to drag you as far, and Yusuke pities Hiei because Koenma came and dragged Hiei off to be his new servant boy, as he's so fond of calling him..."  
  
"Hiei is Koenma's servant boy?!" Kuwabara said, a smile breaking out on his face. He started laughing so hard he fell over. He smashed his head right into the chair that Kurama had just moved, and he stopped laughing and hit the floor, unconscious. Yusuke and Kurama sighed, staring at Kuwabara.  
  
"That guy can't stay conscious for more than ten minutes at a time, can he?" Yusuke muttered.  
  
"I like him a lot better when he's out cold on the floor," Shadow said.  
  
"Don't we all?" Kurama said. Yusuke and Shadow looked at him with one eyebrow raised, but he didn't notice. 


	7. Chapter Seven

Hiei and Koenma arrived in Spirit World two seconds after they disappeared from Kurama's hallway. Koenma screamed until he got everyone's attention. They stared at him expectantly.  
  
"OKAY EVERYONE, THIS IS HIEI JAGANSHI, AS YOU SHOULD ALL ALREADY KNOW!!! HE'S ONE OF THE SPIRIT DETECTIVES!" Koenma shouted. "OKAY, SINCE YOU ALL--- "  
  
"STOP SCREAMING!" Hiei shouted, extremely loud and unexpectedly.  
  
"You better watch it, Hiei," Koenma muttered. "Anyway, everbody, since my normal servant has gone on vacation, you all should know that for the next two weeks, Hiei will be my servant boy. You're to treat him exactly the same as you treated the blue ogre. Don't worry, just because he's a fire demon doesn't mean he'll hurt you. And if he DOES hurt you, I'll punish him. So you've got nothing to worry about! Carry on."  
  
The room instantly exploded back to life. Everybody was running around screaming and whatnot. Koenma walked through and the ogres all cleared the way for him and Hiei. Once they got into Koenma's office, Koenma stationed Hiei at a desk and told him to start filling out papers and such, and answer the phone whenever it rang and everything else like that.  
  
"That blue ogre never did anything like this, did he?!" Hiei asked, annoyed at how much paperwork (oh yes, the cursed dreaded paperwork) he would be doing for two weeks.  
  
"Yes, sometimes he did," Koenma said. "Other times he ran errands and everything else I told him to do. So you'll run errands and do everything I tell you to do."  
  
Hiei's jaw dropped. "I'm a martial artist! I don't do paperwork and answer phones!"  
  
"YOU DO WHEN I TELL YOU YOU WILL!!!" Koenma screamed.  
  
"I just spent months doing homework every night! Now I get an extra two weeks of sitting all day writing up papers and answering phones?!" Hiei said, sounding a little like he was about to lose his mind.  
  
"Yes I do, so you better just do what I tell you and get it over with! It won't do you any good to complain about it! The more you complain, the more paperwork I give you!" Koenma snapped. Hiei looked miserable.  
  
"Damn you," he muttered, walking over to the desk Koenma had instructed him to sit at. He plopped down at the chair and picked up a pen and some papers. He stared at it.  
  
"Good. Get started and don't complain about it. Good servant boy," Koenma said. Hiei groaned at being called servant boy again, and he started beating his head off the desk, saying 'ow,' with every hit, so it sounded a lot like this: *thud* Ow... ... *thud* ow... ... *thud* ow... ... *thud* ow... ... *thud* ow... ... *thud* ow... ... *thud*...  
  
"Hiei, I suggest you stop that. You'll knock yourself unconscious, then you won't be able to work," Koenma said. Hiei looked at him for a second, then started hitting his head even harder.  
  
"HIEI, YOU BETTER STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, YOU LITTLE SERVANT BOY!!!" Koenma screamed, grabbing Hiei by the back of his shirt and dragging him away from the desk. "If you can't handle sitting at a desk, then maybe you could sit on the floor and look like you were even less dignified."  
  
Hiei looked at Koenma for a second before getting up, brushing himself off, and sitting back down at the desk. He started filling out some papers. Koenma sighed and sat down at his own desk to stamp papers. The room was quiet for about fifteen minutes until the phone at Hiei's desk rang, scaring the holey hell out of him and making him mess up the paper he was writing. He started to try to fix it and the phone kept ringing and he kept getting more and more angry until he finally grabbed the phone and screamed into the reciever, "WE DON'T HAVE A TELEPHONE!!!" Then he hung up.  
  
"HIEI, YOU IDIOT! THAT COULD HAVE BEEN IMPORTANT!"  
  
"Well we'll never know now, will we?!" Hiei said.  
  
"I CAN STILL PUNISH YOU FOR IT!!!" Koenma screamed. Hiei's eyes bugged and he got ready to dodge, when the phone started ringing again, startling Hiei and Koenma both.  
  
"ANSWER IT RIGHT THIS TIME!!!" Koenma yelled. Hiei glared at him for a second before answering it.  
  
"Hello, this is Koenma's office," Hiei said, sounding disgusted. "Can I help you?"  
  
While Hiei sat there listening, Koenma went back to his desk and sat down. Hiei glanced at him.  
  
"It's you father," Hiei said dryly after covering up the reciever. Koenma almost died. "What do you want me to tell him?"  
  
"Ask him what he wants," Koenma said. "But don't---" He stopped and stared in horror at what Hiei said into the reciever.  
  
"He wants to know what you want," Hiei said to King Yama. The explosion of screaming from the other side of the line sent Hiei and Koenma spinning through the air and into the wall, leaving spider web cracks spreading out from their point of impact.  
  
"You weren't supposed to let him know I was available! Now I'm dead!" Koenma muttered. Hiei was stuck in the wall, upside-down. The phone was still in his hand.  
  
"PUT MY SON ON THIS PHONE RIGHT NOW!!!" was very clear and loud from the other end of the line. Hiei shakily handed the phone to Koenma.  
  
"Hello, Dad," Koenma said nervously. He paused and flinched at the screaming on the other side. "Well, I just got a part-time replacement for the blue ogre..." Pause. "He's one of the spirit detectives." Short pause. "His name is Hiei Jaganshi." Pause. Koenma looked at Hiei, who was still impaled upside-down in the wall. "He wants to talk to you, Hiei," Koenma said, handing Hiei the phone. Hiei reacher over and grabbed it.  
  
"Hello?" he said nervously.  
  
"You're a pretty rude young man, Hiei Jaganshi," King Yama said.  
  
"So?"  
  
"Why are you my son's new secretary?"  
  
"Secretary? Ptht. He calls me servant boy," Hiei said, ignoring Koenma's buggy eyes.  
  
"Servant boy, huh?"  
  
"Yup." Keep in mind that Hiei was upside down, stuck in the wall through all this. He realized his blood was all rushing to his head. "Excuse me a minute, I gotta get out of the wall," Hiei said. He lowered the phone to the ground by the cord, then he went about trying to pry himself out of the wall. He was pretty stuck. Eventually he got mad and and managed to punch the wall, resulting in more cracks. He punched the wall until that part of the wall just caved in completely, leaving a large hole. Hiei fell on his head and stayed that way for a second before he went off-balance and ended up flat on his face.  
  
"Owie," he muttered. He picked up the phone again. "I'm back."  
  
"You were stuck in the wall?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"What was that explosion?"  
  
"I got out of the wall."  
  
"Did you destroy something?" King Yama asked, sounding angry. Hiei glanced at the hole in the wall.  
  
"Of course not," he lied.  
  
"Good. You better not have or you'll pay for it," King Yama threatened. Hiei raised his eyebrows.  
  
"Pay as in money, or pay as in getting my butt kicked?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Both."  
  
"I didn't break anything," Hiei said, sounding very sure and nodding. His back was to the hole, so he didn't notice the dozens of ogres who were staring in at him and whispering behind his back.  
  
"Good. Anyway, I wanted to talk to you to tell you that if Koenma does anything he shouldn't, tell me and I'll punish him," Koenma's father said. Hiei smiled evilly.  
  
"Okay," Hiei said, plans already forming in his head.  
  
"Goodbye." Click.  
  
Hiei laughed evilly, looking at Koenma in an evil way.  
  
"What's that look for?!" Koenma asked.  
  
"Oh, nothing," Hiei said absently, hanging up the phone and walking back to his desk. "Oh, you've got a hole in your wall by the way." Hiei went about clearing the wall dust off the papers, smiling to himself as more plans formed in his head. Evil evil plans to get himself out of spirit world while at the same time getting Koenma in trouble. Muwahaha. Evil Hiei.  
  
Koenma's jaw dropped. He had no clue how Hiei could be so happy after just talking to King Yama. Of course, Koenma hadn't heard the whole conversation. Just Hiei's side. Koenma walked over to Hiei's desk.  
  
"Why are you so happy, servant boy?!" Koenma asked, slamming his fist down on Hiei's desk and sending some papers flying.  
  
"Aren't I allowed to be happy?" Hiei asked happily.  
  
"No! Well, yes, but you jsut talked to my father and you shouldn't be happy! You should be scared! He's the mighty King of Spirit World! You should be terrified!" Koenma whined.  
  
"Really. Just like I'm terrified of you?" Hiei asked. Koenma grabbed an eraser off the desk and hurled it at Hiei's head. He ducked and it hit the back of the chair, bouncing off and hitting him in the back of the head.  
  
"Owie..." Hiei muttered, standing up so he could get the eraser from behind him. "That whole reflection or richocet thing always gets me. I should get an eye implanted in the back of my head too..." Hiei muttered, picking up the eraser and throwing it at Koenma. It hit him in the forehead, leaving a red mark.  
  
"Hey! You hit me!"  
  
"Nope. That was the eraser," Hiei said, sitting down to write out some more papers. He wasn't paying attention and he got an eraser in the side of the head for his neglect.  
  
"Ha ha, I hit you," Koenma said. "That's two for me!"  
  
"STOP THROWING STUFF!" Hiei yelled, reaching in the desk drawer and pulling out a mega-box of erasers. "I'VE GOT 50 ERASERS HERE! YOU WANNA THROW STUFF NOW?!"  
  
Koenma got buggy eyes.  
  
"OH WAIT, THERE'S SOME THUMB TACKS IN HERE TO! I LOVE SHARP OBJECTS! YOU WANNA THROW STUFF NOW, SHORTY?!" Hiei screamed, pulling out a huge box of thumb tacks.  
  
Koenma's jaw dropped.  
  
"I'VE GOT SOME RUBBER BANDS, TOO!!! AND SHARPENED PENCILS!!! IT'S NOT THAT MUCH DIFFERENT THAN A BOW AND ARROWS! YOU WANNA THROW STUFF NOW, SUCKER- FACE?!"  
  
Koenma got about 20 sweat drops.  
  
"FLAMING ARROWS!!!" Hiei screamed, holding a bow made out of a pencil and a rubber band, then getting a sharpened pencil, setting it on fire, placing it on the rubber band like an arrow, and shooting it at Koenma.  
  
The door to Koenma's office opened and Kurama stood there with Yusuke, Shadow, and Kuwabara behind him. They stared at Hiei, shooting 'flaming arrows' at Koenma. Kurama turned around to face his friends. "And this is why you never want to be around when Hiei flips," Kurama said happily. In the background, Hiei was screaming about flaming arrows and shooting burning pencils at Koenma.. Kurama turned around and ran into Koenma's office towards Hiei. At the last second, Hiei spotted Kurama and turned on him to shoot arrows.  
  
"AGH! HIEI, YOU LITTLE LUNATIC!" Kurama screamed, dodging the pencil. Shadow, Yusuke, and Kuwabara all ran in and tackled Hiei at the same time, piling on top of him to keep him down. They could barely hear his muffled screams. Something about not being able to breathe.  
  
"Are you gonna calm down?" Yusuke asked.  
  
"Air..." Hiei mumbled.  
  
"Are you gonna calm down?" Yusuke asked again.  
  
"Breathe..."  
  
"I think he means we're killing him. He can't breathe," Shadow said, attempting to get up, but Kuwabara was on top of her. "Speaking of which, Kuwabara, you must weigh a ton. I'm finding it hard to breathe myself..."  
  
"Thank... you... Need... AIR!!!" Hiei muttered. Shadow pushed Kuwabara off, stood up, and dragged Yusuke off Hiei. They left the little demon lying on the floor gasping for breath. Kurama stood there with the little upside- down-'u' eyes and a sweat drop. Hiei sat up.  
  
"You people are murderous," Hiei said.  
  
"I'm innocent," Kurama said.  
  
"Thank you guys! You saved me!" Koenma said. Yusuke looked over and saw Koenma cowering under his desk. He burst out laughing.  
  
"Ha ha, Koenma's afraid of Hiei!"  
  
"I am not!" Koenma said, crawling out from under his desk and standing up.  
  
"Riiiiiight," Yusuke muttered. "You just cower under your desk for the fun of it, I suppose?"  
  
"No! Yes! No!" Koenma said, comfused. "Why are you here?!"  
  
"We came to check on Hiei. Obviously he's not doing so well," Kurama muttered. He leaned closer to Koenma and whispered, "What did you do to him?"  
  
"Nothing!" Koenma snapped.  
  
"He threw stuff at me!" Hiei said.  
  
"You horrible person! How can you expect Hiei to do anything when you're throwing stuff at him?!" Yusuke asked, acting like it was the worst possible crime to throw something at Hiei.  
  
"Fine, I won't throw anything! Get lost!" Koenma snapped.  
  
"OKay," they muttered, walking out. Shadow was in the back, and jsut before she went out the door, she turned around.  
  
"Oh, you've got a big hole in your wall, by the way," she said.  
  
"GET!" Koenma screamed, throwing a pen. Shadow pulled the door shut and the pen hit the door right where her head had been. "START WRITING, SERVANT BOY! I EXPECT YOU TO LISTEN TO ME FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS AND NEVER THROW STUFF AGAIN!"  
  
Hiei rolled his eyes and went back to his desk. There were small fires everywhere from the pencils Hiei had burnt. Koenma called in a fire extinguishing group to put them out.  
  
Hiei survived peacefully until about ten at night. Koenma was about to go to bed when Hiei stopped him.  
  
[get ready for confusion.]  
  
"Can I go home now?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Home?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Where's that?"  
  
"Kurama's house."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Can I go home now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"... How about now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"How about... right now?!"  
  
"Huh-uh."  
  
"Oh."  
  
There was a pause. Hiei looked miserable. Koenma stared at him.  
  
"Can I go home now?" Hiei asked. Koenma looked annoyed.  
  
"No."  
  
"Why not?"  
  
"You work here."  
  
"So?"  
  
"So you stay here."  
  
"Working?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"All night?"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"What about sleep?"  
  
"Too bad."  
  
Hiei's jaw dropped.  
  
"You're the night shift," Koenma said. "Sit at my desk and stamp papers."  
  
"No."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Huh-uh."  
  
"You better listen to me, servant boy!"  
  
"Can I go home now?"  
  
"No!"  
  
"How about now?"  
  
"NO!"  
  
"You better say yes or I'll just go."  
  
"Nnnnnnnnnnnno, you won't."  
  
"Wanna bet?"  
  
"There's security outside the door. You leave, they stop you,--"  
  
"I kill them. I go home."  
  
"No you don't."  
  
"What makes you so sure, sucker mouth?"  
  
"Don't call me names, servant boy."  
  
"You can't stop me."  
  
"You wanna bet?"  
  
"I dare you."  
  
Koenma yawned.  
  
"I'm too tired now. I'll stop you in the morning," Koenma said, starting to leave again. Hiei caught the back of his shirt.  
  
"You'll stop me now."  
  
"No. Let go of my shirt."  
  
"No."  
  
"You better let go."  
  
"Did you know there's a hole in your wall?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"You put it there, Hiei."  
  
"So?"  
  
"You should repair it."  
  
"If I do can I go home?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Then it can just stay there."  
  
"Fix it, Hiei."  
  
"So now I'm fix-it boy too?"  
  
"Yup. Fix the wall."  
  
"I don't want to."  
  
"So? Big deal!"  
  
"I don't do what I don't want to do."  
  
"Oh really?"  
  
"Yeah, really."  
  
"Kid, you need a serious attitude adjustment," Koenma said.  
  
"Kid? I'm not a kid!"  
  
"You're a high-school punk."  
  
"No I'm not."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Just cuz I went to high school doesn't mean I'm supposed to be in high school."  
  
"Then why did you go?"  
  
"That dude made me."  
  
"That dude made you?"  
  
"Yeah. That PCA dude."  
  
"PCA?"  
  
"Prevention of Child Abuse."  
  
"You wren't being abused, were you?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Why was he there then?"  
  
"Cuz he was on some special routine surprise inspection thingy, and he came to Kurama's house."  
  
"Oh."  
  
"Can I go home now?"  
  
Koenma groaned and rolled his eyes.  
  
"You're annoying, Hiei."  
  
"I know," Hiei said, smiling innocently. "Can I go home now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Now?"  
  
"No."  
  
"How about now?"  
  
...  
  
...  
  
"... FINE! LEAVE!"  
  
"Woohoo!" Hiei dropped Koenma and vanished. 


	8. The Last Chapter! 8th

When Hiei got back to Kurama's house, he found that Yusuke was still there. They were in the back yard, playing some ridiculous game. Baseball or something. Hiei jumped over the fence and walked toward them.  
  
"Hiei!" Shadow shouted. The startled Kurama and made him miss the ball Yusuke had just pitched. It hit him in the head. "Oops. Sorry Kurama."  
  
Kurama got up, rubbing his head. He picked up the ball and threw it back at Yusuke. Yusuke had been looking at Hiei and he got the ball in the side of his head. They all went into a wild frenzy of throwing the baseball at each other's heads.  
  
"STOP! I'VE HAD ENOUGH THROWING THINGS FOR TODAY!" Hiei screamed. Kurama stopped, startled. He had just thrown the ball. It slammed Yusuke in the head, making him to a complete flip in the air and he landed on his back.  
  
"Owie," Yusuke muttered.  
  
"Hey, Hiei. How'd you get out of work?" Shadow asked.  
  
"I complained a lot," Hiei said. "I'm tired. I'm going to bed." He walked in the door, went straight to his room, locked himself in, pulled off his shirt, and fell asleep on the floor almost as soon as he laid down.  
  
Before he realized it, Hiei was standing in front of Koenma's desk. He didn't even remember waking up. He was just... There. Koenma's chair was turned so only the back was visible.  
  
"Hiei?"  
  
"Yes?" Hiei said. This suddenly all felt very freaky to him.  
  
"Guess what your wonderful priveldge is today?" Koenma said.  
  
"Dare I ask?"  
  
"No, you'll love this one," Koenma said. He had a strange hint of happiness in his voice. It was evil happiness, like he was about to say something that would make Hiei very miserable.  
  
"I doubt it," Hiei muttered.  
  
"You get to scrub all the bathrooms in Spirit World! With your tongue!" Koenma said. Hiei's jaw dropped and he almsot threw up.  
  
"You're kidding?" Hiei said hopefully.  
  
"No! I'm dead serious," Koenma said. The chair turned around and the person sitting in it wasn't Koenma.  
  
It was a pink bunny rabbit.  
  
It smiled.  
  
"Hello, Hiei!" the bunny said.  
  
"What the hell?!"  
  
"I'm your worst nightmare!" the bunny said cheerfully, hopping up on the desk. Hiei raised one eyebrow. The bunny was the cutest thing in the world. To anybody but Hiei. A smiling pink bunny rabbit was not something that appealed to Hiei.  
  
"My worst nightmare?"  
  
"Yup!" they bunny chirped. "I know what you would hate more than anything."  
  
"Really?" Hiei said, more of a bored statement than a question.  
  
"Yup! And here it is!" The bunny leaped off the desk and started kicking him. Really hard. It hurt.  
  
"I CAN'T BE BEATEN BY A GODDAMN PINK BUNNY RABBIT!" Hiei screamed. He sat up, covered in sweat. He was in his room in Kurama's house. He sat there for a minute, gasping for breath.  
  
'Oh, god. It was just a dream. I have never had something that screwed up in my mind before. Being beaten up by a pink bunny rabbit?!' Hiei thought. He was just about to get up when the was a loud crack and Koenma appeared. Hiei screamed, startling Koenma into screaming. They screamed for a minute before Hiei finally got a grip and jumped up, getting right in Koenma's face.  
  
"NEVER DO THAT! THIS IS MY ROOM! DON'T JUST POP IN HERE WHENEVER YOU WANT, SUCKER FACE! I COULD HAVE BEEN NAKED!" Hiei screamed. Koenma's eyes got so big they threatened to pop out of his head at the thought of seeing Hiei naked. "GET LOST!" Hiei screamed.  
  
"You're late for work."  
  
"FOR YOUR INFORMATION, I AM STILL GETTING OVER A VERY TRAUMATIC DREAM!" Hiei screamed.  
  
"Why? What happened? Did you have a dream that somebody died?" Koenma asked.  
  
"No."  
  
"What was it?"  
  
"Why should I tell you?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Cuz I'm your boss, and I told you to."  
  
"Too bad. Get lost. I just woke up," Hiei said. He had barely finished his sentence when the door flew open. Kurama stood there. Hiei and Koenma were so startled by Kurama's busting the door down that they went into another screaming fit.  
  
"STOP SCREAMING!" Kurama screamed.  
  
"Where the hell is your shirt, Hiei? What were you screaming for? Why is Koenma in your room? What's going on?" Shadow asked, appearing behind Kurama and scaring the hell out of him. He spun around so fast he tripped and fell.  
  
"I don't know where my shirt is, I'm screaming because people are scary, Koenma is here because he appeared, and I have no idea what's going on, so don't feel left out," Hiei said, answering all of Shadow's questions.  
  
"Oh."  
  
Hiei looked around and spotted his T-shirt in a wrinkled mess on his bed. He picked it up. "Here's my shirt," he informed her.  
  
"Well put it on!"  
  
"No. It's a mess."  
  
"Well then get a clean one!" Shadow said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.  
  
"Fine!" Hiei snapped. He walked to his dresser and opened a drawer. Inside, quite a few black t-shirts were folded neatly. His school uniform was hidden under everything else in a crumpled mess. Hiei took out one of the black shirts and pulled it over his head.  
  
"There, happy now?!" he asked Shadow. She nodded.  
  
"Yes, I'm happy."  
  
Kurama finally stood up.  
  
"Look, you people need to have some consideration. I was sleeping, Shadow was sleeping--"  
  
"No I wasn't." Kurama ignored her.  
  
"And most importantly, you probably woke up my mother," Kurama said.  
  
"Uh oh, we better get lost before he starts lecturing us on how to care about his mother properly," Hiei said, leaning over to Koenma.  
  
"Right."  
  
Koenma vanished, and a second later, Hiei went too.  
  
Kurama and Shadow stared at where they had been for a seond before Kurama turned to Shadow.  
  
"So what are you doing today?"  
  
"I'm going to try to find myself a house," Shadow said cheerfully.  
  
"A house?"  
  
"Yup. I mean, living here is fine, but I want my own house. It'd be a lot better and I wouldn't have to worry about what other people would think. I could do anything, anytime, and nobody would care," Shadow said.  
  
"... Okay, well I'll help, I guess. You could probably do good with my knowledge," Kurama said. He yawned. "But until then, I'm going back to bed." He walked away, scratching his head and yawning.  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
I'm not going to describe what happened in the two, more-or-less uneventful, weeks in which the most amazing thing that happened was that Shadow did manage to buy a house. But other than that, Hiei spent his days working for Koenma and putting up with, "Hey servant boy, go do this," or "Oh, servant boy, you better get that paper done before--" Yadda yadda. You get the idea. They finally got the hole in the wall fixed, too. The last day that Hiei worked for Koenma, the blue ogre came back and saw him there.  
  
"Hiei?" the ogre said. Hiei looked up from his papers.  
  
"Hey! You're back! I've never been happier to see you in my life!" Hiei said. He instantly vanished and went back to Kurama's house. He got there to find Shadow packing bags.  
  
"Hey Shadow, what are you doing?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Moving. I bought a house," Shadow said cheerfully.  
  
"Really?!"  
  
"Yup."  
  
"God. Well so you're just leaving me here to live with Kurama alone?"  
  
"Sure, why not? He's your best friend."  
  
"What about the whole PCA officer deal?"  
  
"Well, Kurama drugged them and erased their memories, then we destroyed all the records of our existances, well, yours and mine, so you can do whatever you want, actually," Shadow said. "Actually, most of that was thanks to Youko's skills, but the point is, we don't exist in the human's main computers, so we're free!!!"  
  
"Oh, that's good. Can I move in with you?" Hiei asked suddenly. Shadow looked at him cautiously, hoping he wasn't pulling some stupid trick.  
  
"Move in with me?"  
  
"Yeah. I mean, just until I get my own house, or find more suitable living conditions than a tree," Hiei said, shrugging.  
  
"Fine, you can move in. It's a four story house, plus basement, so you can have two floors. And it came with a lot of property," Shadow said. "Pack up. We can move in today."  
  
"Okay."  
  
Hiei started walking away, but he stopped when he heard Shadow say something.  
  
"What?" Hiei asked.  
  
"Oh, nothing. I was talking to myself," Shadow said. Hiei nodded, not quite realizing that talking to yourself isn't normal until he got out of Shadow's room and halfway down the hall to his. He stopped, thinking, 'Talking to herself? Yeesh, maybe she's more insane than I thought...'  
  
Just to make sure, he walked and stood outside her door.  
  
"Now where can this go? Ah! Perfect fit! Good. Thank you. Now. Let's see." There were sounds of her moving something around. Hiei peeked in. Her back was to him. She was going through a stack of papers on her desk. She stopped suddenly and stared straight ahead. "What was I looking for again? Oh, nuts. My memory sucks." She turned around and Hiei ducked around the corner again.  
  
Kurama came walking down the hall. He saw Hiei and started to say something, but Hiei waved his arms around like a lunatic and made the "Shhh!!!!" signal with his fingers to his lips, then pointed at Shadow's room. Kurama stopped and listened.  
  
"You know, I hope nobody is listening to this. They'd probably think I was nuts. Maybe people can hear me outside the window, and crowds are gathering. Yup, the window's open... I better close that before the people outside start thinking, 'Oh no! Better call the men in white coats! That house is full of lunatics!' Then I'd be dragged off in a straightjacket. Maybe I could blame it on Hiei..." The window clicked as Shadow shut it. "But that wouldn't be very nice... Better go with Yusuke. Nah, he doesn't live here, that wouldn't work... What am I looking for? Why am I still talking to myself? It's really not normal and I should stop before somebody notices. Then I'd definitely be doomed to live in a white room with padded walls... Not cool. I'll shut up now."  
  
She shut up. Hiei and Kurama waited for a second before they got bored and left.  
  
Hiei informed Kurama he'd be moving in with Shadow.  
  
"You're moving in with the lunatic girl that you were just listening to who was talking to herself?" Kurama asked, surprised.  
  
"Yeah, well I asked her to before she was talking to herself. Anyway, you'll have your life back to normal with us gone," Hiei said, shrugging.  
  
When Shadow took Hiei to the house, his first reaction was to stand there with his mouth hanging open.  
  
"It's huge!" he said. Then suspicion kicked in. "Where the hell did you get the money for this? Nothing illegal, I hope?"  
  
"No, of course not! Eh... Well I didn't really break the law. Youko kind of had some stolen human artifact and for some reason he decided he'd let me sell it. It got me tons of money at the museum, so voila. I got a house," Shadow said. "Don't worry, they aren't gonna track the theft, so we're in no danger of getting killed for using stolen money to buy a house..."  
  
"Oh, that's a relief," Hiei said sarcastically. He walked up to the front door and turned the knob. It was locked. "Do you have copies of the key?"  
  
"Catch," Shadow said, tossing a key to Hiei. It was complete with a keychain. A keychain with two small, fluffy, flourescent pink dice on it. Hiei glared at it.  
  
"It's pink," he said, disgusted.  
  
"No it's not! It's silver," Shadow said, walking toward him.  
  
"No, idiot! The keychain!"  
  
"Oh. So what? You'll live," Shadow said, shrugging. Hiei took the pink dice off the key and threw them at Shadow, making perfect contact with the side of her head.  
  
"Ow! Fine, so I purposely gave you pink as a joke," Shadow said, pulling a second keychain out of her pocket and tossing it to Hiei. He looked at it. This one was a lot better. It had two small metal figures: one was shaped like fire, painted nice shadows of red and orange, and a 2-inch-long miniature sword-like thing. Hiei glanced at Shadow.  
  
"You're freaky," he said.  
  
"Yes, and proud of it," she said. "Now are you going to open the door or are you jsut going to stand there staring at stuff? First you stared at the house. Then the keychain. And then the other keychain. And now, me."  
  
"Right," Hiei said, shaking himself. He unlocked the door and walked in. It was huge inside, especially without any furniture.  
  
"Yeah, we'll have to get some furniture and clean it a bit, but otherwise, do you like it?" Shadow asked. "And if you don't like it, yell at Kurama too. Out of all the houses we looked at, he said this one was in the best condition, yadda yadda... Hiei? Oooh Hiiiieeeeiiii. HEY! WHERE ARE YOU?!" Her voice echoed. Hiei had went off exploring the new house. "Well fine! You jsut go ahead and vanish! This house is big enough you'll probably get lost! Maybe it's big enough that you can act like I don't even live here!"  
  
"That'd be nice!" Hiei yelled from three floors above. "Hey, this house is really cool!"  
  
"Glad you like it!" Shadow yelled. "Hey, maybe we should have a party or something. We could call it a housewarming party and make everybody buy us stuff!"  
  
She walked into the living room and looked around. There was a fire place, and it was really big. The stairs went up from there, and they ran up to the second floor so that if you were in the living room you could sit there and watch people coming up and down the stairs. You could also jump over the railing and land in the living room. Shadow looked away for a second, then when she looked back Hiei was there, sitting on the stairs with his back against the wall and one leg stretched out in front of him, watching Shadow through the railing. She almost screamed.  
  
"DON'T JUST APPEAR THERE LIKE THAT! YOU WERE WAITING FOR ME TO LOOK AWAY, WEREN'T YOU?! SO YOU COULD STARTLE ME LIKE THAT WHEN I LOOKED BACK!" Shadow screamed. The echo was extremely loud. "I gotta do something about that echo..."  
  
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~  
  
{I have a horrible time ENDING stories.}  
EPILOGUE  
Read some of my other stories.  
They're kind of sort of continuations of this.  
Sort of. But here's some stuff that you can read that isn't in any other stories...  
I don't think:  
Shadow and Hiei get some furniture.  
They have a housewarming party.  
Youko partially takes over Shuuichi's mind and makes him get Yusuke and  
Kuwabara drunk and he steals all their money.  
After that, Shadow gets mad and screams at them all.  
They keep making her mad.  
They end up tied to chairs with heavy leather straps.  
They try to throw stuff at each other. Shadow gets mad when something hits her in the head and she kicks them out.  
Hiei sneaks back in through his window, which he was so wise as to leave  
open.  
Yusuke, Kuwabara, and Kurama stay away from Shadow for a while because  
she's still fuming about under-age drunks stealing money and throwing  
stuff.  
The End. 


End file.
